The Seafaring Life in Cádiz

My Scholarship entry - A 'place' I have visited

Spain | Thursday, July 4, 2013 | 5 photos

As a climate scientist, my primary obsession is to understand the world around me, how it works, and how it changes. Photography allows me to do artistically what my science accomplishes academically – it lets me distill experiences to their essence, lets me take what I see and find the best expression of its truth.

I have practiced photography for nearly a decade now, since I first took an SLR to the zoo in my hometown of Seattle. Since then, I’ve always kept a camera close, as I pursued studies in chemistry and moved to Caltech, where I just finished my first year toward a PhD in atmospheric chemistry. I hope someday to combine my scientific and artistic passions in a career communicating climate change to the public.

This trip to Greenland, where the effects of climate change are felt more strongly than anywhere else on earth, would afford me a perfect occasion to combine my scientific and artistic pursuits. I would apply my multifaceted expertise to this incredible opportunity to compile a photographic story of how the earth’s warming impacts both the landscape and people of Greenland, and I would learn a great deal about both photography and the climate in the process.