Throw yourself into what makes you feel the most alive.
I understand traveling not as an escape, but as an adventure and a passion.
A way of overcoming your fears and living life to the fullest.
Traveling with a purpose makes every trip much more meaningful to me.
And my purpose pursues the nuances I find when cultivating a fascination with people and places.
I keep myself awake and wandering, letting my doubts feed my curiosity and turning both of them into my narrative.
Thus, I seek for the stories behind people's way of living, pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating.
This has been the place where I threw myself into documentary photography.
The kind of photography in which you're not just taking a picture, you're taking a piece of them with you.
Their story, their culture, their notions and their struggles.
And therefore, you're leaving a piece of you there because them and their reality have gone through your life.
And that changes you, inevitably.
So, when the time to get a job came, I took a map and looked at it with an archaic tangle of possibilities.
And without hesitating, I found myself living in a treehouse in the middle of the Dominican jungle ten days later.
Playing random games with random people from all over the world, riding ATVs, horses, murder cycles, boats and bikes.
And doing the things that fulfill my spirit and get the dopamine flowing through my body.
I found myself living with wealth of time in unregimented days with latitude of choice.
Living such freedom that seems more rare, more difficult to attain, more remote in these generations the duration of personal freedom.
I've met more people in my life.
I've met more people in my life.
I've met more people in these past months that I have in my entire life.
I am the photographer and videographer of the Dominican Treehouse Village, a place where guests become friends and staff become family.
Martina.
Hi, this is Martina and this is Stephanie. We are representing Austria and Colombia.
This is Martina and Stephanie. We are from Austria and Colombia.
I don't know how many times we've said that already, but we're saying it again.
Hi, this is Martina.
We are representing Austria and Colombia in the Dominican Republic.
The first person I met when I got here, we bonded from the very first moment.
We couldn't have had more fun together.
Tony. I got the feeling that I was going to learn a lot from her and I did. The awareness of veganism, the motivation for getting fitter, the newfound passion for yoga, and the proof that worldwide traveling is possible if you set your mind into it.
Rachel.
She's a photographer too. The one who I could share my artistic perception of this whole trip with, I've seen.
I never seen it out of touch.
That's a cool shot.
The gateway to this entire opportunity, Rudy and Alex.
Always warm and welcoming. They put a smile on my face every morning. Michael. There's no doubt he's the best dancer in this island.
Leo makes magic with three ingredients. David. Never stops working. Always worth a smile.
Bebo. I don't even think I can fit him into words.
Emma. She's like my mom in the jungle and her food taste is like heaven. And some other friends with whom I basically dance all around, all the time.
Everyone smiling wildly all the time. Their happiness is contagious. They will make sure you feel the Dominican magic everyone talks about.
I want to see the growing experience and presumably to become more whole as a human being.
I want to measure my success and how happy I've been. Any kind of experiences I've had.
I had the desire to seek of the emerging of society for experiences that increase my personal options instead of my personal possessions.
Not dependent on social routine because I prefer a kind of free-floating existence.
This has been a journey of awareness, adventures, creativity, simplicity, discovery, independence, realism, self-reliance,
and growth of the spirit.
