Laugh. Love. Create. Travel. Eat.

Blowing Bubbles

isis375 — Sun, 24 May 2015 10:09:59 GMT

This tale is both cautionary and a lesson in that all too human quality, faith. It is not much a story about what I discovered about a place so much as what I found in people.

Like all good stories, it starts on a deserted island. Well, not quite. But Yakushima Island does remain a small player in Japan’s tourism landscape, often skipped entirely by Okinawan sun seekers. Far from crystal beaches, this island has been plucked from a wild imagination of ancient cedar forests, greens beyond counting and mischievous kodama (Japanese forest spirits).

Yakushima’s trails don’t just carve through the woods, they’ve grown amongst it. As such, you’ll need hiking boots and a wardrobe that caters to all seasons. After all, when the locals say that it rains 35 days a month, you need to approach any cloudless morning with a sumo-sized helping of skepticism. Public transport on Yakushima is also remarkably scarce- there may be only two services a day to some trails. This is certainly not the place for a come-what-may itinerary.

After finishing our second hike, my friend and I found ourselves at the mercy of such retrospective wisdom. The next bus was over two hours away and we were facing plummeting temperatures, intermittent showers and local deer that decided we’d make wonderful playmates. We must have appeared as unprepared as we were because a group of Japanese rangers offered us a lift back to town. As two young women travelling alone this course was probably ill-advised but, spurred on by a few whispered reassurances, we took it.

The euphoria of escaping a cold purgatory was still buzzing under our skin when we stopped to drop the group off at a midway carpark. Alone with a single driver, we then abruptly turned onto a overgrown farm track. Our guide had promised to show us something cool but my elation sunk like a punctured balloon.

After a few uneasy minutes the car halted on a monolithic concrete bridge, cast over a vast forest valley. It was here that our guide emerged with bubble blowers that were so comically over-sized I wondered if he’d stolen them from Wonderland.

Now beaming he asked, “Shall we blow bubbles?”

That grin was contagious and the rest, they say, is a travel story. It’s a story that reminds me that people still have the capacity to inspire faith and that strangers needn't always be wrapped in an invisible cloak of suspicious motives. Sometimes they just want to share their country.

Sometimes they just want to blow bubbles.

The Other Side of Recovery

isis375 — Mon, 24 Nov 2014 11:18:38 GMT

Three years ago, I fell in love with photography.

As a child, I loved to write stories of faraway worlds. Now, my characters are the faces in my photos and, instead of crafting their stories, I unearth them. Photography feeds my gypsy heart and has granted me the courage to stop living on the sidelines. It inspires me to dream big and cling to the belief that is possible to make careers out of dreams.

Yet, the road between ambition and realisation cannot be paved alone. My desire to pursue the extraordinary is buoyed by an incessant hunger to learn and an intrinsic motivation to be more than I was yesterday. Nonetheless, I’m simply a normal person in pursuit of a dream that dwarfs me. I need the World Nomads Scholarship to help me build the foundations of a career platform. Brick by brick, I will climb towards that pinnacle and I want to prove to others that transforming fantasies into reality is not a fairy-tale.

In any story, it is vital to always ‘show’ and never ‘tell.’ A picture may be worth a 1000 words but I want to take photos that immerse people in whole stories. I want them to marvel, think and get lost. To me, that is the true art of photographic storytelling.

Photos: National Geographic Travel Scholarship 2013- Prayers from Japan

isis375 — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 17:53:00 GMT

The chill of cloudless Australian mornings is a warm kiss to Greenlanders but I’d brave worse for the chance to get there. I want to dazzle you but my mind returns to a resonating quote from an article on the regrets of the dying: “I wish I'd had the courage to live true to myself." Last month, a consulting firm offered me a prosperous graduate position. Expected. Yes. Wanted? I don't know. With hope, I turned them down. The internal battle of practicality and passion still rages. What do I want? It’s simplistically complex- I want a license to travel the world photographing, eating, laughing and creating memories. I want to capture the true essence of moments, places and people. I want to showcase the beauty of this world to those who cannot see it. I want to be paid to do something I love and that I find happiness in. I couldn't regret such a true life. However, my internal determination will only take me so far in achieving all of this. I still have a lot of room to grow and I need the concrete skills to back up my dreams. It will take a lot of hard work but I can do it with the opportunities and education provided by the National Geographic Travel Photography Scholarship.

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

isis375 — Tue, 8 Nov 2011 13:31:43 GMT

Compressing your individuality into a paragraph is no easier than photographing a landscape: no amount of photos can ever portray the whole reality. In the center of my frame, I stand as a contradiction. I am a modern city girl who breathes technology, studies visual design, sips soy lattes, drives an eco-friendly hybrid and buys too many shoes. My favourite place in the world is a WWI homestead in the Australian outback and a world away from that life. There is no running water, no electricity, the floorboards fall apart, swallows live in the kitchen, rabbit shooting is a necessary hobby and, just recently, the outhouse blew over. Give me a dusty quad bike; a tank of fuel, an open track and a full camera battery any day! I am an academic who dreams of adventures filled with culture, travel, laughter and creativity. Yet, I thought the life of a travel photographer was too good to be true even with my motivation, determination, desire to continually learn and fresh enthusiasm for new challenges. But the Travel Scholarship made me realize that such a dream could be within my reach. Truth be told, I only picked up a DSLR 4 months ago. I am a novice photographer. But I see the world differently to most: my eye forms frames in a landscape, my penance for details finds what others misses and an undying stubbornness overcomes technical disadvantages. Photography is still an unexplored passion for me and I love that it captures a single unique moment in time. It builds pathways for our memories to return to that moment. It has a timeless elegance that captures the world’s diversity and reveals it for all to see. So, why should I be accepted? Put simply, I have the most to learn, the most to gain and the passion to apply it. Thank you.