"A place I have visited"

Kanha: The bleeding heart of India

India | Friday, June 28, 2013 | 5 photos

I was once an injured 21 year-old rugby player stuck in bed, idling away time photographing parrots out my window. Three years later, I was chasing light and tigers as a self-taught naturalist in central India’s forests.

Every morning, inspired by the images I dreamt of the night before, I would obsess over getting the perfect photo. That fixation has driven me beyond my Nikon DSLRs and into the realm of 35mm film and my grandfather’s medium-format Rolleiflex.

More than that, the forests made me acutely aware of the irreversible damage that India’s unrelenting economic growth is wrecking on pristine ecosystems. This story of ecological loss needs to be told urgently – and powerfully. Yet, for my constant striving to be a good photographer, I now realize that it isn’t single images that make a story. Instead, it is the skill to craft a narrative that ultimately determines effective photography.

It is these two elements, the ability to photograph and then build a story with it, that I seek to learn from Jason Edwards. This fellowship isn’t merely an opportunity for personal learning, but a critical exercise in my journey to tell the story of India’s dying forests to the world.