People that keep up my with my blog, I must inform you that I am abandoning LiveJournal for a blogspot. It's just much easier to manage, and there seems to be quite a bit of other interesting people and foundations that use it. If you have one want to add me or just keep up, this is my new address:

http://queerographer.blogspot.com/

I hope to hear from you all soon.

As my friend noted, I'm winning things left and right. I could not be more ecstatic because the photojournalism world is often dominated by contests. If I can win them now when I haven't even entered the "real world" yet, it shows promise of what I will do when I make it out there. This what I have accomplished lately besides serious bouts of Adam Lambert worship:

1. I begged for everyone's help in the voting round of the Name Your Dream Assignment competition. Fortunately, all the spamming and networking and talking to strangers paid off with a second place finish, and all I had to do was rank in the top 20. Now, I just have to wait. They said the decision of who gets the $50,000 will be posted on the website on or around April 24th. Keep your fingers crossed, everyone!

2. Pat, my photo professor, entered my audio slideshow on Chris Martin into the 3rd round of the Hearst Foundation's annual photojournalism competition. It's a massive ordeal! I placed 8th which gave me $500. Unfortunately, I did not rank high enough to move into the next round but I have a good friend who is, and I am wishing her all the best.

3. I entered the same story into the National Press Photographer Association's Best of Photojournalism contest back when I was in Idaho and nearly forgot about it. My friend, however, posted on my facebook that I won second place in the competition, which blew my mind.

I really cannot believe all this good fortune. Thanks for all those that keep up with and support me in all these endeavors. It means a lot.

I am entered in the Name Your Dream Assignment competition! It is a competition I did not know about until now, which is a shame, because people have been voting since March 3 and the competition ends April 3.

People have to vote for their favorite projects into the top 20. Then, the judges will consider those select for a chance to win $50,000 to complete it. I want this so badly it's not even funny.

Please, please, please go here to sign up and vote for me:

http://www.nameyourdreamassignment.com/the-ideas/rasj/spectrum/

It only takes a few seconds to register and much less time to vote.

If you want to see my proposal, this is it:

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexed, queer-identified people inhabit every corner of the world all the while facing various social pressures to either conform or live freely. Listed below are some examples of this range:

Japan: Japanese culture views unmarried people as social outcasts, including those who are queer. Therefore, many queer magazines offer placement for marriage ads to find partners of a different sex who would be more like a best friend to help keep up appearances yet still help create a family.

Senegal: Nine men were arrested in Senegal for eight years over "indecent conduct and unnatural acts" because queer acts are illegal there. They were also considered part of a criminal group when they truly belonged to an association to fight HIV and AIDS. Because of this oppression, many queers are fleeing the country and those who do stay live socially marginalized.

Samoa: Fa’afafine are often considered a third gender or like "like women" within Samoan culture. Full acceptance of this identity with society is debatable, but these boys are raised as girls, whether by inclination of the kid or by need of the family, and perform duties both attributed to women and men, all the while remaining useful and hardworking members of society.

Holland: Amsterdam is often considered the queer mecca of Europe and features the world's first monument to honor persecuted queers. Beyond that, Holland as a whole grants same sex marriage and adoption rights.

These examples are just a tip of the iceberg of queer identities and issues experienced by people worldwide. Because minorities get pigeonholed into limited boundaries, I hope "Spectrum" would expand people's minds and conceptions of what it means to be queer in the our current world. At the same time, I hope that queer people seeing this will understand that they are not alone, no matter where they are and how they identify.

In the end, I want to transform these stories into a photobook and an interactive website containing all the stories. The book would also contain hand-written stories by the subjects explaining who they are in their society so they can have control over their representation as well. Plus, the website will have multimedia aspects, including video and audio.

Thank you all so much!