When traveling we have this urge to photograph everything we see. We don’t discriminate. We just point and click and hope to bring home a memory. What we mostly end up with is a collection of random shots of the every day, just in different locations. In Shift, now on view at Flashpoint, artist E. Brady Robinson has presented us with these familiar photographs of travel, highlighting brief moments in time and location.

Robinson covers a wide range of subjects in Shift, including modern landscapes and urban settings, driving one to wanderlust. On a whole the collection takes you on a journey to known and unknown places, but focuses more on the act of travel rather than the destination. Several pieces depict scenes from the windows of cars, trains, hotel rooms and airplanes. Many invoke movement.

Collected over two years, the exhibit is an interesting narrative of Robinson's travels, similar to a John Steinbeck novel, but without the human characters. In fact, few of Robinson’s photographs contain people and the ones that do have them facing away from the camera or obscured in some manner. Even in Self Portrait, the flash from the camera in the hotel room mirror covers Robinson’s face.

While the subject matter covered in the exhibit may be ordinary, Robinson’s compositions are far from it. Care was taken in setting up each frame, enabling her to play with the landscapes and reduce many to geometric shapes and color fields. The strongest pieces deconstruct normal travel images down to texture and shape. Leaving MCO is one of her photographs that does just that. On first glimpse the photograph is of a runway seen through the window of an airplane. On closer inspection, you see that the window is foggy and is streaked with raindrops that form vertical columns all across the frame. Through these lines you can clearly see the tarmac. Where the raindrops have not fallen the landscape is obscured and hazy, giving the photograph surprising texture and depth.

Flying at evening gives you the chance to see the sun set. Many of us have tried to capture this shot from the airplane widow, unable to resist the rich deep colors and saturated spectrum. Blue is Robinson’s take; one of the larger pieces in the exhibit, it is gritty and slightly pixilated. There is no context for this landscape but it is instantly recognizable

Shift is on view now at Flashpoint Gallery, located at 916 G Street NW, until October 6, 2007. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 12 to 6 p.m.