Thursday Challenge: Black -

"Gatehouse at the Edge of the Black Forest"
digitally manipulated photograph by Mick Mather
- original photograph by Ann Ballard -

For the theme of black at Thursday Challenge this week, I cropped a photograph taken by my good friend and poet, Ann Ballard ... you can see the original here along with a very succinct vision of how I've come to think about photography as a visual artist. I often get the feeling that I'm the odd man out at the photomeme sites I contribute to each week, even though I've made it a point to keep 99.9% of the posted work completely photography based. What I see that predominates, especially in digital photography, is a purist standard. There's nothing wrong with that in my humble opinion - unless it reaches the stage of an oppressive philosophy where there's no room for anything else - and thus whistle as I work happily away. I know there are a lot of other artists working the way I do and I'm always delighted to see that work, always delighted when it inches incrementally forward in acceptability. Still, there's barely a developed square foot in all of this worldwide acreage. Not a complaint there either, mind you, just an observation.