Photography

Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures. I am a major student of biology on the coast of Ecuador, a multicultural and diverse country where culture, landscape and diversity meets. I have a keen interest in orchids and ornithology but I try to converge all my interest with conservation; and one of the best ways to conserve ecosystems is photography. I recently started taking photos because I adore orchids and it was the easiest way for me to start in photography, then I jumped into something that captured the essence of diversity … fauna.  

Most of the work I have done is in the rainforest and in national parks, they are really important because forest provide different types of resources and goods that humans require and need, but how do you choose to protect or to convert those lands full of biodiversity into grassland, farms, cattle ranches, etc. and at what cost are the humans giving up to one of the most important resources in an era of climate change and population disproportionate growth...?

There is no measure in monetary terms for biodiversity so the best way to tell people the advantages of having diversity and how we depend on it, is by showing them what is lost and how we can change that; so photos are the best tool to tell a story that cannot be read but seen and a landscape image cuts across all political and national boundaries, it transcends the constraints of language and culture.

I see a huge advantage in this scholarship not only because I am interested in conservation, biological diversity and the role species play in each trophic level but also it will improve my skills in the field; I am an amateur photographer and every time I go out I learn something new, and try not only to enjoy it but focus on other aspects that can be improved. I will contribute with my knowledge I have acquired through my career in different subjects and I know how to manage equipment required in field activities. I also know the basics to wildlife and macro photography and I can be quick and rapid when it comes to changing the structure that I want to portrait; but yet I still need to learn because I may know some but there is more film to catch.  

I have worked before in the Ecuadorian amazon, the Southern Choco region and in Colombia; following monkeys during entire days waking up with them and leaving them on sleeping trees, so I know how hard work can be when you are in an outside place being patient and quiet; watching birds, spotting tiny features that set them apart; doing entomology research, looking for rare yet unique species that are tiny to us but huge to microorganism; but I have never done photo journalism in the jungle, especially in a place that is considered a hotspot. Every hotspot has unique biodiversity, and I'll try to compare it to the Yasuni National Park and how much I would likely spot small different features such as composition and the people that live in it, there are many tribes that live and depend on rainforest but they don’t have a voice outside the evergreen forest, so it is a photographer job to show what truly is important  when decision are made; because to even lose one hotspot would be catastrophic and if we lose all of them, we will say goodbye to over half of all species on Earth.

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