Miles to Go by David Fink Barrentine

Miles to Go

For the Memories

ROME DAYTRIPS

PEOPLE

EXTRAS

GREETINGS My name is David Barrentine. I’m a graphic designer at Arkansas State University with a degree in Art History. This is a magazine displaying the images I took during my Photography class during Summer I term of 2015 in Rome.

Photo Credit: Danielle Crosby

This is my second chance to go overseas. I enjoyed it last time I went, which was back in 2011. My wife, Chrissy Barrentine, and I got to go to Florence, Italy but there is way too much there. Too much art, too much architecture, and too much history to be taken in with only one trip. And there was too much there still to take in during this trip. I knew it before leaving this time, but that didn’t stop me going and absorbing as much as possible. It’s

was a daunting task, but I was looking forward to the challenge. Now, while putting together this magazine, I have a chance to reflect on the daily adventures that I underwent with those that I lived with which is allowing the entire trip to sink in and become my memory. I hope you enjoy sharing in those memories with me while flipping through the pages of this book.

ROME

WHEN IN ROME

I’m a talker and I like to meet new people so when we

got on our first flight from Memphis to Charlotte, I had to get to know the guy that I was sitting by. Turned out to be a good chat. If you’re reading this, hello Fred from New York City! Now as lifting as the conversation was on the first flight, it had to be balanced out on the next ones and the strangers remained strangers. I don’t sleep well on moving things. Put me on something that is at least a mile above ground and shakes with the wind, forget about it. Through all of it I managed to get 2 hours of rest through the layovers and flights. That’s 15 hours of layover and 13 hours of flight time and all I could manage was two hours. So if you think that by the time I dropped off my bags that I was ready to crash, well you don’t know me at all. Not only did I take a walk to get my surroundings, I made certain everybody that Chirssy and I were rooming with went with me. At roughly 10:30-11:00 pm we went out on the town. It was great. Found out we are just a couple minutes away

from the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. I was looking for the Temple of Mars to show just how huge of a building that it was but couldn’t find it. I found out later I was walking beside the thing the whole time but I was so close to the outer wall, I couldn’t see the thing. One of those forest through the trees things. Still I got to geek out over Art History and show off a little more of what makes these monuments great to those that I’m staying with. We then went and got a late dinner as I thought it was important that the first timers in this country tried pizza and gelato the way it’s supposed to taste. At around 12:30-1 sleep was had by all. The next morning there was a complication with me getting a metro pass so I didn’t take the bus. I chose to instead walk my wife and roommies to the classroom. On the way I “accidentally” took a wrong turn which took us past a few old churches and the Pantheon, you know, “accidentally”. Class went well, if not too long, and then we were allowed to go back into the city. Today was filled with trivial matters such as shopping for shampoo and wishing we didn’t have to shop for shampoo.

You know how you can tell you’re out of shape? By exercising. And I mean nonstop. As in I did not stop moving a single day I was in Rome. During our trip we walked on average about 9 miles a day. Our highest day Chrissy and I walked a total of 16 miles, but that walking took us to plenty of interesting places: The Roman National Museum, which held statuary from Hellenistic Greece through the Roman Empire, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, the Pantheon, St. Peter’s Cathedral and the Vatican Museum, and several other places that I had visited last time I was studying abroad and many more that I didn’t. These places offered a chance to become reacquainted with the art historian in me. There were several times that I would pull somebody aside to add to the lectures that were already being given by the art history teacher. This was what took place in the classroom, though. The real fun took place outside of the classroom. There were days that we would head off looking for the perfect spot to take photos of the city and find ourselves in places that we had never been to before and somehow never managed to find again. There was a magic to the city that did that to us. It was like the city was wanting to show itself to us

but just enough to keep us interested in finding more. These jovial romps through Rome led to finding both great and not so great places to eat, views of monuments that we had only seen previously in magazines, and allowed for a connection with a history more ancient than the country we live in. That last one is what really made the world around us come alive. To know we were walking in the footsteps of kings and emperors, nobles and peasants, artists, philosophers, politicians, and conquerors; it was at times over powering. Still, we were there for a class and I couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t allow myself to get caught up in the history as much as I had last time we had come. I needed to improve my skills with photography and I was specifically interested in trying out night photography. Rome allowed several interesting subjects to practice new techniques on. I had been studying night photography before we came and I had some information stored on my computer for different settings and what processes needed to happen in order to get crisp images. As a happy circumstance, I figured out how long exposures work and got some really interesting shots of taillights near the Colosseum. I loved doing the night

photos more than the day photos possibly because it was something new and I managed to get it to work out well for me. Not only did I get to learn this new skill, I also reinforced techniques that I learned last semester in a previous photography class by compositing images together to give them a good night sky to accompany the subjects I took. Most of the city was too bright to get a good starry photograph or one of a full moon so I had to composite them together. Even with all the excitement, Rome was a harsh place to stay in for a month for somebody that hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t lived in a city that size. The amount of chaos that constantly filled the streets never stopped. There were days filled with parades, protests, riots, and general tourists. The trip was entertaining, but it gave a great insight into what I had left behind for it. This is not to say the trip was a regret because it most certainly wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. It was just a strong cultural shift that helped to remind us how much we take what we are used to for granted. I think that was the most important lesson that was taught to us during this trip. Always be grateful for the people and comforts supplied by the daily routine.

DAY TRIPS

THE GETAWAY

Just because we were there for class doesn’t mean

we didn’t have days that we could leave the town and the biggest adventures were those that took place outside the ancient walls of Rome. Our daytrips that we went on were all thanks to the meticulous planning of Chrissy the month before we left for the class. She spent all of her free time researching areas that we could potentially go for our days off. We had several places we had thought about going including Venice, Milan, and several other major cities in Italy but we ended up scrapping these ideas so that we could visit smaller towns that are vacation spots for the people that live in the country. Our first day trip was to Tivoli, a small town filled with villas and art that which offered an escape from the traffic of the city. We convinced our roommates to go with us along with a couple of people from different houses. Our timing of this trip turned out to be incredibly fortunate because we managed to arrive at a time that they had opened the Villa D’Esta to the public for free. They only do it once a month and we attended on that day by random happenstance. This place showcased

what luxury looked like both in ancient times and now. It was beautiful and peaceful and everything we were hoping it was going to be. The villa was on the side of a mountain so every spot we walked offered great views of the countryside surrounding the town. During our weekends we also stopped by the beaches of Anzio to swim in the Mediterranean while other times we went to places such as Ostia Antica where there was almost no limitations to where our group could wander. There were also daytrips that came planned out by the teachers for the class. One of these was Pompeii. Chrissy and I had wanted desperately to visit Pompeii last time we studied in Italy but a series of closings and poor timing kept us from crossing that threshold. This time it was part of the class. We didn’t have to plan what day or how to get there and it was great. The heat shot down on us as we walked through the ancient streets of the preserved remains. We saw the cast molds of those buried by the ash and saw the artwork that makes the place famous. Another big trip that was planned for us was to Florence.

This was a treat for Chrissy and myself seeing as we stayed there last time we were overseas. The moment we stepped off the train it was like we had come home. Immediately the streets that I had walked so many times felt fresh to me and the directions to places came back to the forefront of my mind. We went back to places like San Lorenzo, the Ponte Vecchio, and several other places. We ate at the shops that we loved, climbed to the top of the Duomo, and finished our day off with the display of the fireworks in celebration of San Giovanni. It was an overnight trip and I made a point to visit all I could while there, but time was short and we had to return to Rome. I felt an emptiness when we stepped back onto the train that comes when leaving a friend you know you may never see again.

Though these were all great trips, our biggest and most exciting was during the four day weekend we got when Chrissy and I went to Paris, France. This place was such a different experience than Italy. The foods were different, the people seemed more alive, and the town was always performing. We saw the light show on the Eiffel Tower, the stained glass of Saint Chappelle, listened to the ominous organs of Notre Dame all while experiencing new things, like snails. Every inch of this place was buzzing with an electricity and I could feel it. There was not enough time to see and be a part of this place even if I lived there I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t think I would have taken in what this place had to offer. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard to describe the beauty of each of these places we visited during our downtime from class. Even the photos we took of them hardly do any real justice. We went to so many different villiages and towns that each had their own flavor to add to our trip. All of them opened us to new experiences and offered a change from that of Rome. Each place was special in its own way and many of them I hope I get the chance to visit again someday but there is no way to sit here and describe them to you. This is supposed to just be a magazine, after all. To sit and layout just what made each place spceial would take the volumes of books.

Madison Powell

PEOPLE 25

A THOUSAND WORDS This trip was not just for fun.

There was also work to be taken care of while we were there. We were there to study photography and part of doing photography is actually shooting living subjects. There were several times that the teacher set up meets with models or had other students from the trip model for us. We spent this time learning how to direct a person to get them to pose how we wanted and also the importance of lighting for the model. This is something I had a chance to try last semester during a previous photography class but here I had a chance to reinforce and refine those skills. During our first shoot I was torn between doing the shoot and wanting to see the history of the place. I had to remind myself exactly what I was there for which was good because the first day we got to shoot was possibly the best shots that I managed to get of the models. That being said, all of these can have a spot in my portfolio and could potentially lead to more work later on.

Chrissy Barrentine

Jody Hughes Sarah Brown Charves Herves Monica Norman

EXTRAS

WHAT’S LEFT

It’s hard to believe,

but while I was going around through Rome, Tarquinia, Cinque Terra, and all the other places, I managed to still find time to go to out of the way places that offered something completely different from the surroundings they were encased in. Other images were things that I hadn’t ever really considered taking photos of before but were part of major assignments that I had to get finished for class. These images are the extras that don’t really fit in with the others that were taken through the trip. They include texture images, animals, and foods. The food was the assignment and I worked on the strawberries so long that they started looking like raw meat instead of fruit. The animals were a strange but lucky happenstance. They came from a zoo we managed to find in the middle of Rome near the Villa Borghese.

While it was complicated to get good photos because of the displays having glass around them giving a reflection, those that we could get turned out to be really good. My favorite from this set of photos is the Elephant with is the most prominently featured image. The food turned out a lot better than I thought it would as well. I’ve avoided doing food photography in the past due to the fact that it is frowned upon on certain social Medias. I avoided more on the trip because I felt like it looked like a very touristy thing to do. That being said, after I took the pictures of them, I really felt like I should have documented everything I ate for memory reasons. The textures are just that, textures. They don’t contain anything prominent, just relaxing views that were hard to come by in such crowded areas.

WISHING

We tend to race on with reckless abandon toward the future. Our paths are laid out in front of us to follow with disregard of the passing time and place. In some instances we march forward oblivious to what we leave behind us, allowing to exist only as memory. Other times we race forward wishing to skip ahead of time itself to reach goals we have set that can blind us to the miracles that wait in front of our faces. Perhaps I allowed myself to fall into the latter group as the weeks in Rome drew to a close. I waited apprehensively for our return home to reclaim what we so willingly left behind at the start. Now that I’m here reveling in the commodities of everyday life, I can’t help but wonder if I spent too much time wishing it away. Perhaps I did only because I wished for the comfort of my own home or perhaps I did because I wished for the support of my old friends or maybe it was because I wanted to lay eyes on the faces of the dogs I call my own. Now that I’m back and getting settled back into the life I was so ready to put back on like a familiar coat, I can’t help but wonder how long it will be before I find myself wishing to go back.