Minimalist Photo-theme, a practical approach?

What I would like to do:

I would like to create a blog using WordPress which is nearly all photo-based.

I will be taking many photos every day and featuring one-photo each day from that day.

There are basically only three types of pages that I am concerned with right now. The Main page, the Photos-from-that-day pages, and the pages of the individual Photos themselves.

Main page

On the main page I would like to feature a photo from the most recent day at some appropriately scaled, large, resolution such that the photo is the dominant element of the page (all photos will be shot at 1920×1080).

Beneath this will be three columns which I will develop later. (Links to other sites, calendar linking to Photos-from-a-particular-day pages, flickr feeds, etc)

Photos-from-a-particular-day page

On this page the specific photo of that particular day will be displayed at large resolution, similar to the Main page. Beneath this will be thumbnails of other photos taken on that day, and some widgetable areas.

Photo page

Will display the photo at large resolution, but beneath this will be comments and some widgetable area.

The problem?

I am very new to WordPress and do not want to make bad design decisions that will cost me time later. Could anyone point me in the right direction of a good theme to start from to build this site?

In addition to theme suggestions, I am also wondering what the best way to handle this content is, since I will be dealing strictly with photos. Is the only way to do this by creating a new post for each Photo?

Here is what I am thinking so far, but again, I am very new to WordPress and am not sure if I am overlooking something major.

Each “Photo page” will basically be a new Post with an empty title and empty description. The Category for all Posts will be Photo. The photo that I would like to be featured for that day will have some sort of tag that says “featured” and I will need to code the Main page to display the photo from the featured tagged Post for that day. The Photos-from-a-particular-day page will find all posts from that day and display the featured photo and thumbnails from the photos contained inside all of that day’s posts.

Does this sound like a practical way to achieve the layout that I have described? Are there any existing templates that would serve as a good starting point? Any suggestions, code snippets to achieve some of the bits I have described above, answers and links would be well appreciated. Thanks.