St Patrick’s Day is one of those holidays that sort of feels like a holiday without really being one. It sneaks onto the calendar with a simple theme that everyone recognizes right away. The color green. And while most people celebrate it with festive clothes or themed drinks, it can also become a surprisingly fun photography challenge when you are visiting a theme park.

One of the creative exercises I enjoy doing in the parks is setting a goal to find things in a specific color that you would not normally expect them to be. With St Patrick’s Day around the corner, green becomes the obvious choice. It sounds simple, but once you start looking for unusual uses of color, it trains your eye to notice details you might normally walk right past.

Take for example a photo I captured in Star Wars Galaxy’s Edge at Disneyland. When most people think of the iconic astromech droids like R2-D2, they immediately picture the familiar blue version from the films. But if you look closely around the land, you might notice a drink vending cart painted green with a matching green R2 style droid attached to it. Suddenly something that should feel familiar becomes a perfect subject for a green themed photography challenge.

The trick is to avoid the obvious. Landscaping does not count. Green plants and grass are everywhere, and they are too easy. The fun comes from discovering green where you would not normally expect it. Maybe a gift shop has a display of plush characters arranged by color. I once photographed a display that looked like a suitcase filled entirely with Kermit the Frog plush toys at Walt Disney World Resort. By getting close and filling the frame with Kermit faces, the image turned into a sea of green.

Candy shops are another great place to explore during themed holidays. Special treats often appear in colors that match the celebration. Around Valentines Day you might see pink everywhere. Around St Patrick’s Day you may suddenly find green sweets that make perfect photo subjects. The challenge becomes deciding how you want to photograph them. Do you fill the frame with color, or shoot from an unusual angle to make the color stand out in a creative way?

If your camera has a selective color mode, this type of challenge becomes even more fun. Some cameras allow you to keep a single color in the photo while everything else becomes black and white. That effect can create some striking images when you wander through the parks searching for your chosen color.

Even if your camera does not offer that feature, editing software can easily achieve the same result later. For example, if you keep blue in color and convert everything else to black and white, you could photograph Sleeping Beauty Castle and allow the sky to remain blue while the castle itself turns monochrome. Red can also be especially dramatic against black and white backgrounds. Blue becomes even more interesting during the early part of blue hour right after sunset when the sky still carries rich color.

If you are visiting the parks with friends, you can turn this into a group challenge. Send everyone out into different areas of the park and see who can find the most unusual example of the chosen color. It is a great way to spark creativity and it often leads to discoveries that others might never notice.

Advanced editing tools can also let you reverse the idea. Instead of keeping one color and turning everything else black and white, you can remove just that one color. Imagine photographing a vibrant flowerbed where the colorful blooms stay bright while the green stems and grass become black and white. Suddenly a familiar scene becomes something unexpected.

The real goal of this exercise is simple. Have fun and challenge yourself to see the park a little differently than you normally would. Small creative challenges like this keep your skills sharp and help you find new ways to surprise the people who view your photography and sometimes even surprise yourself.

And remember, the challenge does not have to stop with green. Try it with red, blue, yellow, or any color that catches your eye. St Patrick’s Day simply gives us a great excuse to start with green and see where our creativity takes us.

If you decide to take on the challenge, I would love to see what you discover. Come share your photos in the Fairy Tale Photo Academy Theme Park Photography community on Skool. It is a great place to connect with other photographers, compare discoveries from different parks, and challenge each other to keep seeing the magic hiding in plain sight.