I discovered travel and photography together. I can’t do one without the other. My camera will lie unused for months in my home, yet rarely leaves my body once my backpack and I step off a plane.
The viewfinder literally helps me focus the stimuli of foreign travel, sharpening my experience of the riot of Indian colour, the fleeting perfection of a late afternoon ray of desert sun, the unflinching gaze of one who’s seen too much. I love the thrill of that one-in-a-hundred clicks when I know I just captured the essence of what it feels like to be in this place, in this moment.
But it was only when I started a blog of recent Indian travels that my love of storytelling fully emerged. Marrying photos to stories allows me to bring others along for the ride, for the beauty, wonder and tragedy I see, and for my attempts to make some sense of it all.
This scholarship would be an unparalleled opportunity to hone my photographic skills with a master photographer, to learn to better see my photos as a storytelling medium, and to ultimately connect, and hopefully engage, more people with the world around them.
