If you are a talented photographer — or are trying to become one — Swamplot needs your help. And if you’re a reader who just likes to snap fun cameraphone pix, Swamplot needs your help too.

We’re trying out a new group documentation project, and we’re doing it one week — and one streetcorner — at a time.

Here’s how it’ll work: Each week, Swamplot will ask readers to document a particular location in the Houston area. If you’d like to participate, just visit the location, take some terrific photos, and send them in!

What’ll that get us? A new weekly photo feature, which we’ll run on Fridays.

Interested in participating? Here’s your first assignment:

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For the first round, we’ll start with a somewhat central location: the intersection of Kirby and West Alabama. We’d like you to take photos within 500 feet of that intersection.

Photos of what? You get to choose! We’re just hoping to find an interesting portrait of that location — once we view all the submitted photos together.

To get your photos to Swamplot, use Flickr. (If you’re not on Flickr already, just set up an account.) Then join the Swamplot Flickr group! Be sure to add the following tag to each photo you want to submit for the first assignment: “Kirby & West Alabama.” If you like, add brief descriptions, comments, notes, or more tags to help explain your photos. If you can figure out how to geotag your photos, go ahead and do that too! Then just submit them to the Swamplot pool. Simple, huh?

We’ll select some of our favorite pix of the week for our first Friday post. We’ll link to the rest of the photos. And we’ll hand out the next week’s assignment!

We’ll provide a few tips in some upcoming posts. In the meantime, post any questions you’ve got in the comments section below.

How will this project turn out? Who knows? But aren’t you excited to find out? Let’s see what you come up with!