Sometimes I like to imagine that I'm walking around in the past. Not the past as in, say, the 1950s or the Renaissance Era or pre-Ice Age or anything like that. The past as in my past—my future's past. As if I somehow time-traveled back to the year 2015 from a time decades later, and am now "living" the memories of my future self.
Which is technically true. We are all living and experiencing what will become memories for our future selves.
The other day I wrote down the phrase, "Capture the Mundane While It Remains Mundane." But it's difficult to photograph things that seem boring and common. These things don't draw our attention, they don't spark our creativity, they don't inspire us. We see them every day and so we don't think of them as temporary. But one day this will all be merely a memory. As our society changes and our technologies advance, as babies become children become teenagers become adults, little by little it all goes away, usually forever.
I want to capture what I can, while I can, before things like iPhones and laptops and tablets disappear from ubiquity. I want to seize life around me as it exists now, no matter how mundane it may seem today. One day it will no longer seem so banal.
If you somehow woke up in your own past, what would you photograph?