30 day photography challenge

I had the idea that I should post a photo everyday. I am not a professional photographer, but occasionally I do take some pretty cool photos. I definitely need to get better, so I thought this would be a good way to motivate myself to try to take one interesting photo a day.

I decided I needed a theme, and immediately the idea of "Place" popped into my head. I am generally drawn to photos that evoke feelings of time and place (great photos also hint at a deeper story that one has only glimpsed), so it seems natural that I should try to capture that with my own lens. Of course, when I say "place," that could mean a specific place, but it could also just mean a sense of place, so don't look for pictures of landmarks everyday (although there may be landmarks sometimes), and I can only hope that a few of my photos conjure up stories for people as they look at them; we'll see what success I have.

Constructive criticism of the photos is welcome as I am learning, but please keep in mind: I'm learning. I'm not proclaiming that I am a great photographer or that I am a better photographer than you or anyone else. I just like photos, and would like to better be able to express myself through photography in a way that ends up being pleasing to the eye.

I am not going to use PhotoShop or any other kind of photo-manipulation, aside from turning a photo black and white (I'd switch film, but we're in the digital age and I don't have film). Why no manipulations? Well, on Google+ I follow several photographers, and this has caused me to give quite a bit of thought to photo-manipulation lately. Is a photograph really a photograph once it has been manipulated with PhotoShop to get ride of "blemishes" in the landscape or to make colors more vibrant - or different all together? It's artistry, but is is photography? For me, it's no longer true photography. A photograph is a snapshot of time, place, emotions, etc, and as such is raw and truthful. Once manipulated, that truth is gone.

I'm not saying there isn't a time and place for photo manipulation; there is, and those images can be breathtakingly beautiful (or just good fun if you want to make a photo look "retro" for a Facebook post), but they aren't really photographs anymore. Art, potentially, but not photography.

Anyway, those are just some thoughts that have been going through my head lately. You may agree or not, but right now it's my story and I'm sticking to it. Meanwhile, I'm off to take a photo.