If there were no limitations and no restrictions the first thing I would do is take as many of the Santa Fe workshops as I possibly could. I would then get in my car and drive. I would stop wherever I wanted to shoot the America that people doesn’t think exists but I know is there. I would find people and try to tell their stories. I would find the places that people tend to overlook and shoot and shoot and shoot.

After several months of that I would get on a plane and travel - Europe, Asia, Africa. To be able to go to small, out of the way places; tiny villages; finding “invisible” people and places there as well. There is so much out there I know I could spend the rest of my life shooting and still not get to a small percentage of what I would like to.

We pass these people almost everyday - on the way to work, school, or wherever else we go - but we barely realize they’re there. Worse (and I’m guilty of this too), we deliberately ignore them (especially when they tap on our windows and beg for loose change or food).

I’m not sure how common this sight is in your area, but beggars seem to live on every major intersection here in my city. If I didn’t care about making a living (and wasn’t so worried about my safety), I’d be out there doing this now.

I haven’t travelled very much, but as a migrant and hence a perpetual foreigner to the place i call home today, borders and the people that cross them are very close to my heart. Some do it voluntarily, some are forced. Some are subject to extreme poverty, and others are submerged in luxury from day one. People do it for a myriad of reasons.

A study of the borders that people cross all over the world is something i’d love to commit myself to photographically, in black and white, and full color in seperate sets.

Now to return to reality, where money is way too limited!

1) If I could, I would travel around the world and photograph life as I see it. I’d like to capture the contrasts of each culture and I’d like to let people see that even when there are much differences, there would be things that are the same too.
2) I’d like to relive the parables I’ve learned child, to be able to portray each story in a series of photographs…
3) Of course, I’d document my life. That being said. It answers my question, I’d bring my camera with me.

I would definitely do photojournalism. It has never been so easy for human beings to communicate and, yet, I think most of us (at least in the US) are more sheltered than ever. Sure, we have streaming video, podcasts, webcasts, but I still don’t think anything packs the same punch or tells the same story as the right photograph. Years from now, when we look at the conflicts and events that changed our lives and the world around us, we don’t remember videos. We remember single images… The young Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack, the US flag being raised over Iwo Jima, the “Times Square Kiss” after World War II, a young Chinese student standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square. The list goes on…

That being said, I’d travel abroad to conflict zones and poverty-stricken areas of the world and do my best to tell the story of the voiceless. I want to put images in front of people that make them finally say “it doesn’t have to be this way”… I want to be able to make people leap out of their comfortable chairs and coddled lives to do something, anything, to make their world a better place.

_That_ would be true success.

I guess I’d do some units at college in photography. I’d buy a Hasselblad and travel to Japan with my family, then on to Germany to feed my Volkswagen addiction.

And since money would be no barrier, I’d fly over every couple of months to join you on your photowalks

That’s it really. Everything else I’ve got already.