If I were to tell you that this is Memphis would you believe me? I suppose you might presume I was telling the truth. What if I said it was Toledo, Des Moines, Lincoln, Charlotte, Cleveland or any number of other cities dotted across our map? Could you tell? What if I said it was 2012 or 1982? Can you decisively pick out a “when” that goes with this shot?

Behind any one of those little black window pane rectangles exists a space that undoubtedly was occupied by a select individual day after day, week after week. How much of what we see here was directly impacted by what might have gone on behind even a single window? Is there a chance that somewhere in this shot – behind one of those brick walls – sits a person that is related to me? Related to you?

Alleys seem to show up in our catalogue of photos more frequently than you might expect.  This one is in Leadville, Colorado where it snowed in June while we were there.  Just the other day I was out in the alley behind our studio finishing off an expired batch of pack film that had been left in a Polaroid camera.  A guy was walking down the alley and asked what I was even taking a picture of out there.  Being too shy to admit he was part my most recent shot, I shrugged and replied, “Just the alleyway.”

The thing is alleys, especially in older areas, are full of great leading lines, natural vignetting from overhanging vegetation and all kinds of other interesting things ranging from graffiti to decaying furniture.  Sometimes, there’s even a random guy walking along to add a human element to the shot.  In short it’s a target rich environment.

Maybe that guy couldn’t see the beauty of that alley.  Maybe he’d walked down it so many times he didn’t really even see it any more.  Maybe he never considered that it could be beautiful because someone called it an alley.  In making art of something as ordinary as an alley, I hope to give you, the viewer, a different perspective on what is beautiful, to surprise you with what images may move you.

I seem to be pretty good at finding this shot in any town.

When I was a kid I made forts out of couch cushions. You did too. If you would have asked me back then, “Hey kid, what’s the best way to run a wire from one place to another?” I would have come up with stringing them along poles. It seems very much like the kind of thing that someone would come up with that really hadn’t thought the problem all the way through.

Yet there they are. Everywhere. Wires that crisscross every section of everywhere like a giant screen wrapped around the planet. How many miles of wire are out there? How far into space could we tether a toaster oven?

One of the big lies in the art world is the notion that something must be carefully conceived in order to warrant attention.

Hogwash.

I challenge everyone reading this to take up your phone tomorrow and shoot a glass on a table. Don’t go out of your way to do it. Shoot it at breakfast or lunch or sitting at the bar. When and where doesn’t matter. But, do this. Try a little harder than you might otherwise. Fill the frame and try to do it without the camera’s flash. Try to keep distracting elements out of the picture. Get a good angle on it – get low and shoot at it instead of down on it. Use one of the bazillion apps on your phone to convert it to black & white and post it to Facebook or somewhere else where people can see it.

Don’t sweat over it, have some fun with it.

The picture above wasn’t snapped with a cell phone. I’ll admit that. But, it was taken while relaxing on a back patio while relaxing with some friends. Don’t let anyone fool you into thinking that creativity isn’t within easy reach.

As MakeShift Photography, Steve and I take a couple long road trips each year.  While we’ve learned that efficient packing as well as minimizing clothing and other conveniences makes for a more pleasant trip, especially when it comes to hauling gear into wherever we happen to be staying each night, we do anything but travel light when it comes to photographic equipment.  In fact it’s almost thematic that we take our ten day road trips with more cameras than we can reasonably hope to shoot.

But every now and then, we are forced to travel light when it comes to gear.  For example, this image was shot on a trip Steve took to Colorado last May.  He flew, so he only packed a single backpack he could carry onto the plane.  This meant leaving his usual go-to camera, his Mamiya RB67 at home.  Instead, he opted for the more compact Mamiya C330 which allowed for interchangeable but smaller lenses.  We’ve both found that challenging ourselves with certain limitations such as leaving what is familiar behind inspires us to take creative risks we might not take otherwise.

The graphic quality of a place can sometimes be extremely obvious. Anyone that’s ever been to Red Rocks in Colorado has seen this first hand. When you happen upon a place that’s popular and easily photogenic it can be something of a challenge to capture it in a way that’s different, or at the very least, uncommon. Undoubtedly someone took this very same shot, possibly within minutes of this shot, with Instagram, Hipstamatic or some other iApp designed specifically to make it look low-fi, vintage… Cool?

I’ll leave that judgement to others. What I do find amusing is that it can be a bit gutsy to be in a place you don’t get to visit very often and to photograph it with a little wooden box that has no lens standing next to a person that didn’t bother to bring a “real” camera because the one on their phone is, “good enough.”

I suppose there’s a punchline here somewhere. Certainly I could say something that would make the purists lugging around forty-five pounds of high-end gear want to slap both the pinhole and the pocket phone out of our collective hands in one fell swoop of their tripod. But, I’ll resist at the risk of sounding like some kind of elitist Hipster.

Wink wink, nudge nudge.

Go outside and look at something cool.

We can only promise to do the same.

Happy New Year from your friends at MakeShift Photography!

-Steve & Erin