travel

I’m sick, I might even have a disease. The symptoms? If I stay in one place for too long I am prone to want to go on an adventure to some far off land. It really is bad. I mean I have heard people talk about wanderlust but really, this is serious.

The problem is, my wife and I have been living in the same small town in North Carolina for about a year and a half now and I’m craving adventure. We are here because I’m working on my masters degree, with the goal of moving back overseas (we both lived overseas for a bit of time a few years ago). In the time we have been living here we have gotten to do a little bit of traveling and have even had the opportunity to go on a photojournalism trip to the Czech Republic and Hungary. But despite what it sounds like, I think the urge for adventure hits me about every three months.

I’m coming up on my three month mark. I find myself looking at travel photojournalism websites, reading the blogs of photojournalists, and dreaming about being somewhere else. I don’t really understand all of this, I’m wired a bit differently (my wife can attest to that). I don’t know what to do with this urge except go with it!

This weekend we are taking a trip up to West Virginia to visit family and attend a family reunion. I guess this is going to have suffice to the bug for now. It is a road trip and since we don’t have any other trips planned till November, well I’ll take what I can get.

Life always seems interesting, the kind of interesting that is good, but leaves you looking forward and wondering what will tomorrow bring. When I lived in Russia and was traveling around the country to photograph different people groups, or just photographing around Moscow, I wondered what life would be like after I moved back to the United States, but now, I find myself daydreaming of life back overseas. What will it be like? Where will we live? What will the art culture be like there?

I love to learn about how different cultures interact with art. All embrace it in some fashion or another, but what are the intricacies of how they do it? That is what my travel bug is all about, capturing the way that a culture views and embraces art.

International humanitarian photography is my passion, that being said I wanted to take a second to share a website that I came across a few weeks ago that is focused on “providing grants to help photographers focus on humanity”

The website is Focus for humanity. The council of photographers representing Focus for Humanity consist of David DuChemin, Gavin Gough, Karl Grobl and others. What are they all about? “Our mission is to provide financial support, resources and training for professional and amateur photographers who capture these stories of our shared humanity and to help fund their work with NGOs.”

This is a great resource for anyone looking to enter into international humanitarian photography as they have grants for things like mentoring through the International Guild of Visual Peacemakers, connecting photographers with NGOs and helping potential professional photographers take the first step into their humanitarian photographic career.

My hope is, for anyone looking to transition or is already shooting in the humanitarian field of photography, that this foundation will be a great resource for you and that it will be a valuable tool as you seek to accomplish you passion to serve through photography.