When I was growing up I remember walking down the stairs into my favorite place in my Grandparent's house... the basement. There in the basement with wonder and amazement, I stared up and down the tall bookshelves that housed hundreds of National Geographic magazines. Mawmaw and Pawpaw had been collecting them for years and for me, they were an unending source to feed my sense of creativity and expand my small world into a big one. I would flip through the pages and just dream for hours of what it would be like to travel to all the places I'd seen literally all over the world. I’d wonder what it would be like to have interactions with the animals I'd seen running through the plains of Africa or swimming in the great seas that cover our planet. I'll forever be grateful to my Grandparents for providing those yellow-bound books.
This morning I awoke to the news that the National Geographic TV on Instagram had selected my image "Sea Ninja" as the winner of their On Assignment challenge in the category of Underwater. I can't tell you the flood of emotions and excitement that brought me. I know it's not published in their print edition, but for me, the excitement was just the same.
I will continue to capture the wonders of this world and share them with the people that inhabit it and maybe one day, just one day, one of my photos will be printed in one of those golden books and some other kid will be inspired by what their eyes see.
