2010 Scholarship Winners

Reid Blackburn Scholarship

Leah Millis

Leah Millis is a junior at Metropolitan State College of Denver.

Recent experience includes:

  • June 2009- August 2009 Staff Photographer for the Loveland Daily Reporter Herald.
  • June 2009-December 2009 Assistant Photo Editor at The Metropolitan (student-run weekly at Metro State College of Denver).
  • January 2010- Present Photo Editor at The Metropolitan.
  • January 2010- Present Photographic collaborator on monthly column for Life on Capitol Hill (local monthly paper in Denver).
  • August 2008- May 2009 Photographer’s Assistant for Lifetouch Photography.
  • August 2008-January 2009 Staff Writer/Photographer for The Alumni News Agency, a small newspaper distributed to high schools throughout Colorado.
  • August 2006- June 2008 Knox College Public Relations Office Photographer.
  • August 2006- May 2008 Staff Photographer at ‘The Knox Student.’

Education:

• Graduated from Denver East High School: May, 2006
• Knox College: August 2006-June 2008
• Metro State College of Denver: January 2009-present

Other experiences:
January 2006: Millis traveled with Colorado Haiti Project, where she helped as a volunteer at a temporary medical clinic in a remote village called Petit Trou de Nippes. She decided to pursue photojournalism after spending 12 days photographing local school children, village life, and doctors providing medical care.

November 2006-January 2007: Millis traveled to Thailand, Cambodia, and Nepal after applying for and winning Knox's Richter Grant usually meant for seniors ($1,200). Her goal was to experience new cultures, and complete a photojournalism project. Millis made meaningful human connections, experienced and photographed extreme poverty and connected with men, women and children of differing cultures.

September 2006- May 2008: I was a member of a student athlete mentoring program called Reading Buddies. In the program student athletes travel a few times a term to a local school in Knox Country to read to younger students from first through fourth grade.

Clint McFarland of Fittstown, Ohio is dropped off by a pickup man after his saddle bronc run July 31 during the National Little Britches Rodeo World Championships in Pueblo, Colo. McFarland ended up placing eighth in the world at the end of the senior boys saddle bronc competition. Photo by Leah Millis. Denver, Colo.

Goals

"My first goal has always been to return to Haiti after studying French and Creole so that I can tell a comprehensive, thoughtful and well-rounded story with my camera.
After that, I would like to pursue whatever stories call to me. I don't have to travel across oceans to find people who have no voice who need to be heard.
I will pursue work at local news organizations and I will tap the unique knowledge and resources that can be found in newsrooms until they are no longer available to me.
I may also travel and possibly work with NGOs internationally to tell stories of those people who need to be heard in other parts of the world. Though there are many stories to be told here, I would like to return to the dumps of Cambodia where I witnessed people living on vast rubbish heaps, where children are buried alive every year. Additionally, there are many places I have yet to visit and explore.
I will work for the rest of my life pursuing the decisive moment or "images a la sauvette", as Henri Cartier-Bresson once put it. I will use my camera and my compassion to help my fellow humans to the best of my abilities."