Travel Photography Scholarship 2010

My Photo scholarship 2010 entry

Worldwide | Saturday, October 16, 2010 | flickr photos

My name is Vanessa Yuen and 15 years ago, as a university student, my friends would have described me as dependable and steady. And very possibly, risk averse.

In early 2006, I walked away from my familiar, comfortable life, packed up and moved to New Zealand – a country I’d never been to and knew very little about, where I had no job or personal contacts. Why? I wanted to see the landscape for myself - not just in books and movies - and I wanted to know if I could do it.

Today, I am an aspiring travel photographer who wrestles with my all-too-frequent fear of failure, but who fully intends to succeed because I am passionate about photography and creating images that excite curiosity; travel; and learning, simply for its own sake, yes, but also because knowledge is easily shared.

This scholarship would be a huge leap forward for me: it is an opportunity for exposure, education and experience, but most importantly, it is an opportunity to be better than I am today. I want to be very good at what I do and I want to get better as time goes on: the desire for improvement has to be there because it can only be achieved with hard work, humility and the willingness to accept criticism.

The photos I’m submitting were taken a few years ago on a trip through Tibet, a place with which I was captivated, as much for the clarity of the light, as for the harsh beauty of its landscape. The theme of these photos is the contradictory nature of life in Tibet. First, you see homes nestled amid the harsh landscape. Then, in Lhasa, the monks debate Holy Scriptures as spectators look on; the debaters, the monks, become the observers. Finally, the conflict between progress and tradition: technology versus spirituality; electrical wires across a deserted expanse.