Visiting Manchester Daily Photo

Good to see Manchester Daily Photo back to work chronicling life in the city this week after a seasonal  break from normal service for some archive shots.

Today’s picture, bringing into focus something from the everyday is typical of the blog which does what it says in the URL – a different picture from the city every day.

Captioned “Is that a challenge, or….?” this mundane sign is a sight I’ve walked past most days for years – to the point of not even seeing it, and certainly not thinking twice about its message.

But that’s been the interesting thing about this project – sometimes the images are simply general views of the city, things considered everyday and unremarkable perhaps, while others pick up a detail which could be overlooked during day-to-day commuting, working or socialising.

I’ve been following the progress of the blog since it started back in October and recently caught up with the photographer behind it – Paul Capewell.

The MMU Information Management student moved to the city from Amersham describes himself as “a photography nerd who walks a lot.”

“I tend to notice little details around the city (as well as the big things). “I mainly hoped to share my photos with others as I have steadily built up a fair lot of them, but I also wanted something to keep me taking pictures frequently, and encouraging me to keep my eyes open for new and interesting things to take photos of. As such, the site’s only been up a couple of months so I’ve barely scratched the surface!

“I took my inspiration from a few daily photo sites around the world like Auckland, Wellington, Riga, London etc – and as such I had expected most of my visitors to be from around the world, but it turns out they are predominantly Mancunian! So there’s a little extra pressure to explore the unseen, but it’s also encouraging to know the locals are enjoying looking in their own back yard.

“The responses have been very encouraging too. I think most of my viewers follow the site on Twitter (@mcrdailyphoto), and they often reply via Twitter to either retweet a link to their followers, or to comment on a particular picture or theme. Other followers use Facebook to stay updated, and often leave a note there to say similar things.”

Please note, the images re-produced on this post are with the kind permission of Paul Capewell who holds the copyright – if you wish to reproduce any of them, contact him.