When I saw the opportunity to apply for the BJP’s and Visit California’s Meet California competition, I had to apply.
The description provided on the competition website reads:
Meet California will give four photographers the opportunity to road trip across the Golden State on a 10-day British Journal of Photography commission, in partnership with Visit California. All trip expenses will be covered and, amongst other prizes, each photographer will receive a £2,500 project grant.
While in California, the four competition winners will each produce a new body of work that responds to their experience traversing the vast and diverse destination. Steering clear of generic picture-perfect travel photography, each body of work should delve beneath the surface of California and reveal the daily occurrences and unexpected nuances, as well as the people and places, that give America’s Golden State its distinctive character.
Narrative-led bodies of work, which hone in on individual communities and activities, will be encouraged.
A carefully crafted itinerary will take the winning photographers to some of the most vibrant pockets of California. For a photographer, the diversity of the Golden State presents endless opportunity and inspiration. There are few places in the world that offer the vibrancy of its iconic cities – serving as global centres for art, entertainment and technology – and the beauty and tranquility of its Pacific coastline, sprawling redwood forests, vast deserts and towering mountain ranges.
Although each winning photographer will develop a standalone body of work, the practitioners will travel across California as a group. Working as a photographer can be notoriously solitary but Meet California will be a truly shared experience.
The all-expenses-paid trip will take place between 05 and 16 September 2018.
This is too good a chance not to take a punt on.
But, as it is narrative led, and as I was torn between my environmental work and my dog project at the start of my MA, I decided that for this I would apply with examples from my Humans and Dogs of St Agnes project.
I didn’t come across the details of this until quite close to the deadline (less than 24 hours). I picked it up from an email alert by Peggy Sue Emerson.
I submitted these images:
Along with images, the application required some background info about the applicant. Below is what I wrote:
Based in Cornwall, my photographic practice predominantly looks at the human impact on the natural world through the use of alternative and camera-less photographic processes.
