River Lee London

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Worldwide | Wednesday, October 13, 2010 | 5 photos

I'd been living in East London over the winter 2009 until June this year and got to know and love the River Lee. I used to cycle down it to work and back every day taking pictures on the way. This trip turned into the highlight of my day. It’s an area of many changes as the London Olympic Stadium is being built there. There is some wonderful graffiti art, interesting buildings, canal boats and this spring and summer a flock of swans settled down there.
I discovered photography relatively late in life but it has developed into a real passion over the past 10 years. I bought my first DSLR 1.5 years ago, before this I just had a little compact camera. I’m really hoping to be able to forge a career out of photography or at least earn some money with it and winning this scholarship may help me on my way. Photography is an expensive business and I’m constantly trying to save money to buy more equipment. The equipment I have is still pretty basic. Winning this Scholarship would be the best thing that has ever happened to me. I’ve been teaching myself but there is much to learn and it would be absolutely wonderful to be able to work alongside and learn from a renown, experienced travel and wildlife photographer such as Jason Edwards. Furthermore, I have developed a strong interest in wildlife photography this year and the prospect of chasing after rare wildlife is very exciting to me. The destination couldn’t be more fantastic or interesting, a Buddhist country in the Himalayas. It is a culture that I would love to learn more about. I’ve had some contact with Tibetan Buddhism through Samye Ling in Scotland and it would be absolutely wonderful to be able to visit a place where it is practised. It really couldn’t get much better than this.