Wow: Romania

I keep promising myself I’ll update this collection soon.  I’ve got pictures waiting from Iceland I took this summer that have that real Scandanavian metal-and-rocks feel to it.  Until then, check out what a real photographer can do:

Medieval in Shades of Gray

This blog has photos from a professional photographer of alleys in Sighisoara, Romania.  They might qualify better as streets, thus breaking my rule against picturesque streetscapes, but they’re narrow enough and include sufficient passageways that I think they qualify as alleys.  Check them out.

1 year+

I need to keep this going.  Here’s a nice alley from Richmond, VA.  It’s right behind a restaurant called The Tobacco Company, which has a very Richmond-sounding vibe:

Richmond, VA

My Childhood Alley

Here it is:  The alley I grew up in.  I happened to be in the Chicago area a few weeks back, so I drove by the alley I first played in as a kid.  Isn’t it beautiful?  Imagine a bunch of kids running through this alley, somewhere between Huck Finn and Our Gang.  

This was the place.

From best alleys

Stratford, Ont.

Stratford is about 2 hours west of Toronto. For some reason,* it’s become a big Shakespeare hub. I was only there for 24 hours so I didn’t get to go to any shows, but it’s a great looking little town. Everything’s clean and nice and all the pubs have good local beers.

I like this shot because of the flowers on the back porch of the restaurant and the Canadian flag flying over the city hall.

* Yes, I realize that Shakespeare was from Stratford-on-Avon in England, therefore Stratford Canada, with the Avon river running through it, is the Shakespeare connection. I don’t think it was named Stratford, Ontario 400 years ago, though. My question was more, Why did they decide to found a Shakespeare-centric town in the middle of Ontario?

Portland, Maine

I just went up to Portland, Maine for the first time this week. There were some great streets, but not a lot of alleys. Here’s one alley just for the hell of it.

The streets were all very small, but they weren’t small enough to be considered alleys. It presented a bit of a philosophical problem: when does a small street become an alley? Do alleys have to go behind structures? If an alley gets too big, when does it become a street?

Portland is a beautiful town, filled with streets too big to be alleys.

Beijing

Here’s another one from China: Beijing, near the Forbidden City. I like the fact that you can see some bikes in the foreground, even though they’re blurry, and there’s someone working on something off at the end of the alley. One problem with taking alley photos is that I always feel like someone is going to come out and start asking me what the hell I’m doing, so I tend to take them a bit on the fly. Often I’ve got my camera at my side and I’m snapping as I’m walking. Hopefully the more I do this, the better I’ll get.

I’ve got more photos coming. If you have any you think might fit here, please send them to me at alleywaysphotos[at]gmail.com

Cairo

My wife just took a trip to Egypt and found this nice shot of an alley/walkway/something. Pretty cool, I think.

More Moscow

Not a great picture, but I like it because it gives you a sense of the feel of walking around Moscow and peering into alleys. Invariably, there’s an armed guard somewhere nearby, and there’s almost always a gate or a bar and a couple Mercedes hidden around the corner.

Mocba

It’s hard to take pictures in Moscow without feeling like some security guard is going to come by and slap the camera out of your hand. Nevertheless, here’s a nice one taken just north of the city conservancy.

Shanghai

Here’s one from Shanghai, just south of the French Concession. It was snowing when I was in Shanghai, so I got some really weird shots, like this one.