Christenberry worked with several different kinds of cameras throughout his career, but he made his first pictures with a Kodak Brownie—a rudimentary camera outfitted with a basic plastic lens—that he had received as a Christmas gift from his parents when he was a child. The Brownie was a ubiquitous amateur camera designed to take snapshots easily. Christenberry had his film processed at a local drugstore, and while the resulting prints were rather soft in focus, as in this photograph of a distant church, they possessed a raw quality that suited his subject matter.