Just Like Clockwork "I am a camera, with its shutter open, quite passive. Some day, all of this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed."

My Photo Scholarship 2010 Entry

USA | Friday, August 6, 2010 | 5 photos

For as long as I can remember, my father has had a subscription to NGM. As a little girl, I was always fascinated with flipping through the crisp pages to stare at all of the beautiful places around the world. I would run my hands over the glossy photos, hoping I could one day go to those places. As I grew older, I began reading the articles, originally wanting to pursue a career in writing. Yet as I went through high school, I began to realize that writing was not satisfying any of my artistic needs. In my small, rural town of Bethel, Pennsylvania, I soon saw that I could be so much bigger than what was expected of me. That was the year my parents bought me my first film camera.

I began to take pictures of everyone and everything, slowly realizing how much I enjoyed the weight of a camera in my hands, the sound of the shutter click, and the rewards of sharing my photography with everyone. Over six years later, my camera has hardly ever left my hands.

Recently, I challenged myself to take a photo of myself every day for an entire year (thefinishedfilm.blogspot.com). By completing this project, I have learned to see myself as nothing short of beautiful. If I can do that, why can I not show everyone else how beautiful they and rest of the world can be? I believe that winning this scholarship is the next step for me to show everyone the beauty of the world and of themselves. Winning this would show people that even a small-town girl from rural Pennsylvania can make her mark in the world, simply with the click of her shutter.

The place I have visited for this contest is found in its metaphorical location. Where the actual location is at the house of my grandfather, to me, the place I have visited is deeper - the heart of my family. By exploring the past and present of my grandfather, I dig through the cancerous disease and heartache eating away at him to the roots and strength of my family. To me, the emotional location of these photos is much more important than the physical.