Green is our topic for week 13 of the 52 week project and do you know what popped into my mind instantly when I saw this topic? I am GREEN with envy when it comes to photographers who have more experience than me. I still spend time almost every day trying to improve my photography skills. Some might say I'm a bit obsessed.

Given how much there is to learn about photography, I am still fairly early in my photography career. Because I discovered photography later in life, I feel like I need to learn as much as I can as quickly as I can before time runs out. My vision already isn't great.

I bought my first camera in August 2014. I quickly got frustrated and literally shelved it for months. In 2015, I started going to classes at a local photography school and then I really got serious about learning it in December 2015.

Recently I had an experience photographing at a location I'd never seen nor did I have the opportunity to see it before our session. I did google earth research on the location but that only helped me so much. There were a lot of buildings and structures around and not surprisingly, I wasn't happy with my results. I'm used to shooting in parks and in more open areas. (Around trees... remember?) When I was faced with shooting around buildings and structures, I struggled.

This is where it gets tricky for me because I don't at all want to wish time away but I long for the day when I am more comfortable and more confident when facing something unknown in my photography career. However I was very recently reminded by a friend / mentor to look back on my work from just a year ago and see how far I've come. I tend to forget that.

We all need to give ourselves more grace. At least I know I need to not be so hard on myself. Anyone else (photographer or otherwise) suffer from this too?

The good news in this story, my style of photography was right there the whole time I just couldn't see beyond the unknown immediately to figure it out.

Here are a couple of sample images from this session and I'll blog about it more in the near future. 

My second take away from this is that I need to get out in my town with my camera. I think one of our weekly topics for the 52 week project should be "urban" because I need more experience photographing in urban areas. 

Earlier this week we had a really overcast day so I took my camera with me on my dog walking visits. Molly's family already has a lot of really green lush grass in their yard so the opening photo is her and that is my "green" photo for the week. I am still green with envy over other photographer's skills and I suppose I always will be. 

This is a blog circle and up next is Kelly Garin Photography, Columbia, SC. I'll be curious to see what the other photographers do with the subject green because many of them live in climates that are still quite cold or dreary and I don't think they have much green grass yet. This should be fun. Keep clicking the link at the bottom of each photographer's post and you'll end up right back here.