Today I’m talking about us girls – no sexism intended! In my previous post, I briefly mentioned joining an all female photography group, a place where female photographers can feel safe and inspired while offering photography workshops to develop skills, or even just for a chat.

Every month we will be participating in a competition based on a topic or phrase and our first was “Women only” – very fitting to start us off. Mind maps and lists later I had an idea, something a bit out there(“You’re a bit weird, darling. A good weird though!” – the boyfriend said.) but I wanted to stand out, there’s no point in hiding it all away, plus as a push to my confidence I had forced myself to do it. The shoot did not go to plan, I had one specific idea that was not going right, until my last shot where something had finally fallen into place!

Now you might be looking through this post and seeing images I took of Chloe and Maddy and be thinking “This doesn’t look very Women Only to me”, and that’s because I won’t be sharing my image on here. The reason being is it took a lot for me to share it with a group of women I don’t even know, and the people that know me know how hard that would have been. It’s an image that will prompt a lot of debate, and a debate I’m not ready for, maybe one day though!

I did receive a runner-up prize for having confidence in my work, which seems pretty ironic now. The criticism is always something I will struggle with, but hopefully, as I progress I get used to it and don’t take everything to heart. We’ll be going for the win this month!

Oh! So these images of the girls and the reason for them (if you need one) is I was given a new lens for my 22nd birthday. It’s a very exciting bit of kit that has me reaching for my camera bag every day – she says even though she left it at her boyfriends for 4 days, seriously, who manages to leave a camera bag behind? All the images above were taken with it, big thanks to the girls who just wanted a quiet drink but, it was the golden hour and I just needed to practise!!