On my personal blog, I’m participating in Reverb10, a writing project dedicated to reflecting on the past and putting out positive energy for the future. There are different prompts each day and yesterday’s prompt really struck a chord with me both personally and professionally. So I thought I would write about the photography community that I have been so incredibly blessed to be a part of the past couple of years.

As you may or may not know, I’ve been shooting semi-professionally since 2004. I never really knew that’s what I wanted to be when I grew up until that summer, when I finished photography classes and was asked to shoot a friend’s wedding that summer. It was the hardest thing I’d ever had to shoot – both because I wasn’t accustomed to shooting people (up until that point, I absolutely despised portraiture), and I had never shot a wedding and I was scared to death I would screw it up.

It also happened to be the week that my ex-husband and I decided to split up. Talk about a difficult thing – finding joy in the concept of marriage while you watch your seemingly perfect marriage fall apart. That was a hard day for me. But I got through it and had a great time.

The following year, I decided that I really wanted to pursue a career as a photographer, so I got a job working as an event manager and learned everything I could learn about banquets and events. I immersed myself in photography workshops and did way too much “pro-bono” work (yes, I fell for the, “you do this for free and we’ll promote the heck out of you” bit that many new photographers fall prey to). I shot my second wedding at the end of the summer and signed up to take a wedding photography workshop with a successful (albeit arrogant) photographer in the Denver area.

Four weeks and $700 later, I gave up my dream. You see, while I attended this workshop, I learned of the incredible possibilities my photography career had and I allowed myself to dream – dream BIG. I got excited and I knew that someday, I too, would get there. That is, until the host of the workshop asked us to share our work with one another and we would critique it.

I sorted through stacks of prints (yep, I was still shooting film back then) and found my favorite six shots from the two weddings I had done. I proudly put them up on the board and the host of this workshop started laughing. He called my work “boring, uninteresting, and plain” all in one sentence. He then proceeded to note that with 30,000 weddings a year in Colorado, there was more than enough work to go around, but we needed to decide if we were A, B or C photographers. When he said “C,”  he looked at me. At that moment, I assumed that I would never be an “A” photographer, and I stopped shooting as much. I didn’t even try to shoot another wedding for almost two years. I also quit participating in photographer’s groups, as I assumed that all professional photographers were as arrogant as this one was.

What I didn’t know until last summer was that this photographer was a rare exception in the photography community. Last summer, I had the opportunity to take the Create Better Images workshop with Kimberly Jarman and Jennifer Bowen. Kim and I actually went to elementary school together, although we hadn’t spoken since I moved away in 2nd grade. It was a fun little reunion of sorts, but I learned so much that day that it renewed my passion for photography and got me really excited to pursue this career once again.

I learned a lot of neat things like finding the light and creating fun composition, but the biggest thing I took away from that workshop is how incredibly supportive the photography community actually is. In the past 18 months, I have met a few dozen new photographers and not one of them has been an arrogant jerk like the one I work-shopped with five years ago. In fact, they have ALL been amazingly supportive of one another, and me, as I step back into the scene. To quote my fellow CRAVE sister, Jill Grano, “collaboration is the new competition.”  This could not be more true among the photographers I now know.

I am so thankful for re-discovering the photography community and making new friends in the process.