Yunnan Torch Festival

My Photo scholarship 2011 entry

Worldwide | Sunday, October 23, 2011 | 5 photos

These photographs were taken in Dali, Yunnan at the annual ‘torch festival’. Every year, local minorities meet in their villages to play music and burn giant torches to commemorate a wrestler, said to have used torches made from pine trees to drive away a plague of locusts. My images demonstrate an authentic community celebration that I feel grateful to have taken part in.

I am a self-taught amateur photographer and am learning through trial and error. New people and places excite me. I have been living overseas for 4 years and initially used my camera as a way of recording my expat memories. The experience indulged my lust for traveling and, being a teacher with great holidays, I took every opportunity to visit and experience other countries. The more places I visited, the more interest I took in photography, continually striving to improve my shots and develop new skills. I began to see places in a different way. I now combine my passions: meeting new people, photography and traveling.

I always have a camera in my bag; ready to catch those unexpected, one-off memories of my experiences and the people I meet on my journeys. I now see my photos as capturing ‘moments’ in time that I can share, rather than a record of where I have been. Faces have become my inspiration. Every face tells a different story. My photography is a way for me to see this, capture it and deepen my understandings of another’s experiences.

I am naturally inclined towards adventure and discovery. Winning this scholarship would enable me to fully immerse myself into an unknown environment and culture, thereby enriching my own experiences and develop my skills as a growing photographer with expert guidance, and exposing the wider community to them through my art.