Not An Expert

After joining the Google+ community (and yes it is that, forget what you heard) I found it to be a great place for photo-sharing.  As a person who is not a photographer but takes a lot of pictures and likes to share (some of them), I wanted to participate in/engage with the photography community. During the Christmas holiday last year, a door was opened, called the G+ 365/366 project.

In a nutshell G+365 is a photo-a-day project.  You take a photo every day, tag it with the +G+ 365 Project tag and share it.  The curators of the project/page may also reshare your “Public” photos.  Day 1 of your project starts whenever you decide to start so if you didn’t start on January 1, it is okay. Overall the guidelines for participating/posting are simple and of course participants have to adhere to Google’s Terms of Service.

First there was an expectation that viewing, commenting, re-sharing others photos and sharing my own shots would be inspiring.  Secondly, some skills had to be learned if I wanted to get any better and eventually upgrade to a DSLR. Participating in the project would be an education. Thirdly it was a test to see if for ONCE this old broad could stick to something for an extended period of time, without it being required.

• A month and half in, my camera broke (not really just the battery door), other than that snafu it’s been great. Thus far I’ve:
• viewed a lot of beautiful photos
• talked to real photographers, who are all very nice
• learned by imitation and by just trying to stuff to see if works
• found a couple of photography themes that I really like including +Sacred Sunday and +Powerline Friday 
• been inspired to look at my surroundings differently

and

• not quit the project 🙂

There are days when I’m tired after work and don’t feel like shooting.  There are days when I have no ideas, no inspiration and not even the strength to look up a theme to help me, but at the same time, quitting has not been an option. The rewards of participating however, greatly outweigh those bad days, just because of all the cool, quirky and even mundane things that I’ve seen along the way. So if you’re looking for something fun, yet challenging I highly recommend the G+ 365 Project.

In case you’re curious about what a non-photographer shoots you can see my album here.