Evening Puja in Varanasi

Ganges and the Gods - Evening Puja in Varanasi

India | Sunday, November 23, 2014 | 4 photos

I picked up my first camera when I was eight. When asked what I wanted to be when I grew up I always answered: “A National Geographic Photographer”. But how does the quote go? Life is what happens when you're making other plans...

Fast forward to 2011 when I quit my job to travel for a year. Just me, a backpack, and my camera. That year with my camera changed me. I found patience I never knew I had while waiting for the sky to light my frame just the way I wanted. I embraced mistakes I made while teaching myself to shoot manually and without a flash. (I also learned to always shoot in RAW – gah!).

I want to win this scholarship so I can truly begin the journey of giving myself wholly to this art, to this lifestyle... to telling the story of this planet that is so rapidly getting smaller. I look forward to not showering for days while trekking, sweating, and searching for that one image. That one image that will rip open someone's heart. That one image that will make them catch their breath and forget for a solitary moment to breathe. I want to use my camera to be their eyes; to invoke in people's hearts a passion for our planet and all the wild things in it.

I hope you pick me.