dylan barnes | blog

Category: Travel

Road Trip: North Carolina

It’s been a ~~minute~~ month or two since my last post. Suffice to say, the fact that the blog has been sitting here untouched for the better part of the month has been biting at the back of my mind. It’s a relief and joy that I am typing a new post.

With just seven days of a much needed break from work and my doctoral program, a road trip was necessary to assist in clearing the mind and giving attention to the things that may have been neglected in the whirlwind of the past month or so. The ten hour drive from Tampa, FL to Asheville, NC and then another four hours to the Raleigh-Durham area was definitely welcome. Without getting anywhere near long-winded this time around, I’ll get right to the photo stuff.

Cameras: Contax T3 & Olympus OM2S

I really wanted to limit the gear I brought on the trip in hopes that I would just focus on shooting images. I left the medium format stuff at home and I can’t say I regret it. I only brought the T3 and the OM2S, both of which I had yet to put a roll of film through since acquiring. I didn’t realize the accidental risk I took by only taking two untested cameras until I was on the road. My initial thoughts on both cameras are definitely positive. The T3 will most likely replace my Ricoh GR1 (maybe for good) and the OM2S will probably replace my Pentax ME Super for the time being. The T3 was definitely the most used camera on the trip, it was hooked on my wrist almost every minute of every day and made shooting simple and pleasurable. The portability and simplicity is something I appreciated and something my shoulders thanked me for later on.

Film: Lomo Color 800, Portra 400, Ektar 100

I never used the Lomo Color 800 film before this trip and based upon reading the reviews, I would have to agree that the color temperatures are inconsistent and unpredictable. Some shots got really cool blue tones while a few were spot on and others were extremely warm. However, I would have to say that’s part of the beauty of the Lomo company and product as a whole, no?

Well, so much for being succinct. With all that being said, enjoy the photos:

December 27, 2016
Brooksville Villas & Hillside Estates

If you know anything about Florida, it probably stems from the ridiculous headlines that come out of this wonderful state: The 2004 election, Florida Man, George Zimmerman, Casey Anthony, The Sausage Castle, people eating people, you name it. Don’t worry, the depression and the ridiculousness doesn’t stop there.

I recently stumbled upon one of the most bizarre places just a few miles from where I live. Nestled at the bottom of a hill behind a year-round Christmas House on the edge of downtown Brooksville, you will find 45 acres of abandoned affordable public housing between two different projects: Brooksville Villas and Hillside Estates.

While the Villas are rather destroyed and tagged with graffiti, the Hillside Estates are seemingly intact (maybe even livable?) minus the fact that all of the estates are boarded up. Needless to say, it is very eerie driving and walking through this neighborhood. A very Tim Burton type of feeling. To follow my curiosity, I decided to do some research, and well, the story is expectedly heartbreaking.

To keep it short, the 125 families that lived here beginning in 2010 had been kicked out of their living spaces just two years later in 2012 due to varying reports of reasoning. The Tampa Bay Times reported that the buildings were unsafe to live in and the building repairs cost more than their value. Others say that unstable management, misuse of FEMA funds, loan default by the management company, and the fact that the houses were basically built on a swamp were all reasons that the Brooksville Housing Authority was dissolved and the two housing ventures ended up failing and consequently still stand there vacant. The city of Brooksville owns the property which is appraised at $325,000, but would cost over $1 million to demolish. I guess it’s cheaper to let it die on its own while still maintaining the landscaping every couple of weeks.

As of 2014, the city of Brooksville considered the idea of turning the area into a dense residential area with a town center, however two years have already passed, and no word has been printed about it since.

It’s a depressing scene, to see these buildings that were once homes to 125 families just sit there vacant, but needless to say, it is an interesting place and another notch on Florida’s belt as weirdest and most depressing state in the country.

All images shot with Mamiya 6, 75mm f/3.5 on Kodak TMax 100. Scanned on Epson V700.

October 30, 2016
Portland, OR and the Pacific Northwest

One of the best perks of teaching that isn’t related to teaching has got to be the summer vacation. Every other summer, I try to take a worthwhile trip that lasts approximately two weeks. This past summer I finally made it out to the Pacific Northwest. I even got to see the Grand Canyon for the first time, albeit from an airplane, but I saw it nonetheless. I got to spend a few weeks with one of my closest friends, Ryan, who is also an amazing photographer & visual artist, as well as the person I started taking pictures with when we were just sixteen years old.

Most of the trip, probably about ten of the fourteen days, were spent in Portland and the surrounding area. The remaining days were spent taking road trips to various landmarks, parks, Cannon Beach, Astoria, and Seattle. The best part of staying for two weeks was that it allowed for a real good mix of doing the typical “tourist-y” things and really getting to spend enough time embedded in the city’s culture and feel like I’m living there for a short amount of time rather than just visiting.

Exploring a new place with someone familiar gives off a unique feeling, a certain type of “new nostalgia.” We filled a lot of the silence talking about our teenage years and listening to bands that we grew up listening to like Taking Back Sunday, Saves the Day, The Spill Canvas, and countless others. In a sense, many of the road trips we took during those two weeks in our fire red Hyundai Accent rental car felt just the same as the ones we took a decade ago in my beat up, blue Ford Taurus.

Ricoh GR1 // Portra 400

Mamiya 6 // TMax 400

Mamiya 6 // TMax 400

Mamiya 6 // TMax 400

Mamiya 6 // TMax 400

Contax G1 // Ektar 100

Contax G1 // Ektar 100

Olympus Mju II // Rollei Chrome 200 (C41 Cross Process)

Olympus Mju II // Rollei Chrome 200 (C41 Cross Process)

Ricoh GR1 // Portra 160

Ricoh GR1 // Ektar 100

Contax G1 // Ektar 100

Mamiya 6 // Portra 160

Mamiya 6 // Ektar 100

Mamiya 6 // Ektar 100

Mamiya 6 // Ektar 100

Contax G1 // Portra 160

Ricoh GR1 // Ektar 100

Ricoh GR1 // Ektar 100

Mamiya 6 // Portra 160

Mamiya 6 // Portra 160

Mamiya 6 // Ektar 100

Mamiya 6 // Portra 160

When it came to developing the 120 film from this trip, I had a few complications and it seemed like every time I developed and scanned a roll, something would go wrong. I sort of narrowed down the issues to occurring somewhere in the shooting and development process. Two of my rolls were so underdeveloped that they were basically unusable. The grain was so thick that it looked more like pixelated noise (which in a sense, it was), causing me to think that my scanner was broken. I am still not sure if I shot the film at the wrong ISO rating, if the film was ruined by security scanners in the airport, or if I did something wrong without realizing it in the development process.

I’m definitely not a professional by any means and as stated in my previous post, my images will be riddled with errors. These sort of issues come with the territory of developing your own film and you always run the risk of losing images that you only had one chance to take in that moment of time. I find it to be exciting and nerve racking at the same time; knowing you may or may not be able to salvage those memories in a physical form. I take a lot of time composing images with my Mamiya 6, and I vividly remember snapping the images that are unusable, so at least I still have those snapshots recorded in memory.

August 29, 2016