One More Notch in the Hipster Belt

This is my Minolta SRT 101.

I traded a bunch of DSLR gear at a local shop called Camera Works c.2014. It was in near perfect shape, and is something I've had a lot of fun experimenting with. It takes pretty neat photos, like these.

Before the Minolta SRT 101, I had an Olympus Rangefinder that belonged to my mom. It had more issues - I think a dirty sensor and maybe some other things. The Minolta is a bit of a tank, and is very fun to heft and lug around.

When i still lived in Eastern NC, one of my favorite things to photograph was the rural scenery around Black Jack, a small town just outside of Greenville. It was very easy to get off the state highway and spend hours wandering around side roads and find abandoned tobacco barns, old trucks that had been reclaimed by trees, caved in silos, and dead decaying things.

View more Eastern NC photos here.

Durham County has similar rural areas like those in Eastern NC (ENC), although not as expansive. I have found a number of areas around Bahama and Rougemont that provide nice spots for more rural photography. The main difference between rural Durham and rural ENC - when it comes to this farm land - is poverty. There are far more abandoned and depreciated structures in ENC than there are in Durham Co.

There can be some risks with rural photography, especially in areas like Durham County which are not as abandoned and desolate as the big pockets of ENC that I explored as a teenager. For starters, an abandoned house or structure on property in Durham is very likely to be on the property of someone who is still residing there, and who will not take kindly to someone stopping to photograph their stuff.

However, rural and landscape photography continue to be some of my favorite things to explore with, and I'm eager to push out into the more rural parts of the state and see what I can discover.

In addition to rural and landscape photography, I do enjoy some architectural photography - especially churches.

This church - the Chapel of the Good Shepard - is near where my folks live. The structure itself is over 150 years old. It's pretty dang cute.

This map shows other points of interest across NC that I would like to photograph on film - rural sites, urban sites, and churches.