I last revisited this blog in September. It’s been quite a ride. I’ve left social media, came back onto social media through my KingdomSpot account, put KingdomSpot to death, and now I’m occasionally on social media as myself again. I’ve done a lot of growing in a number of different life spheres, and honestly things are going pretty well right now.

One aspect that has gone almost completely ignored, however, has been photography. I’ve done very little of it lately. Really, the last couple years have been pretty light on the photography side. Even when my wife and I went to Scotland for our anniversary last year, almost all of my ‘photos’ were really just screengrabs from the video I took.

As I think back, one of the enjoyable bright spots in my photography was going through a Fall photo challenge that was being done by Peter McKinnon. I really enjoyed that, but it was way back in 2018. So much has changed since then, and I think it’s time for me to revisit this concept.

One thing that will be very different compared to the last time is where I am putting photos. Back then, it was Instagram. In all honesty, my experience looked something like this:

Step 1: Take photo.

Step 2: Edit photo.

Step 3: Post photo.

Step 4: Obsessively refresh Instagram looking for dopamine hits.

Step 5: Be sad when my photo doesn’t have as many likes as I arbitrarily decided it ought to have.

And repeat. My last blog post was about the toxicity of social media so I won’t belabor the point. I won’t be directly posting my photos on social media. I considered keeping them completely private, but it would be nice to be able to easily share them with someone if the opportunity arises. Hence the website here. I plan to do this for myself, and not for others, unless people actively wish to follow along. Hopefully this will maximize the joy of photography while minimizing the detrimental effects of seeking validation online by metrics as foolish as view count.

The Challenge

The photo challenge, then, will be 28 days of photography. One photo per day, starting June 1, with a different theme each week:

Week One will be focused on lighting and shadow.

Week Two will be focused on textures and patterns.

Week Three will be the human element.

Week Four will be composition and framing.

Every day will be a new post with my edited photo. When the whole challenge is over, I plan to make a single blog post collecting all of them (or possibly one post for each theme), and then deleting the single posts. Should someone read this and have some interest in following along, you can subscribe to my website and get email updates as I post new photos. But really, that isn’t the point. I want to reengage with photography and genuinely enjoy the whole process.