Hershey Lodge with the Fam

I recently had a trip with the family to Hershey Lodge in early August. It's a wonderful place for kids at the age ours are, and close to home for those of us in the tristate area. Also, it is much more economical than bringing the whole family to Disney - which, if you understand how much kids cry everyday between the ages of 3-6 years old - makes you feel much better with your return on investment 💸.

I brought the Fuji X100V, yes... but where's the challenge in shooting toddlers and an overly squirmy kindergartner with that type of kit? No-sir-ee... the photos that you're seeing here were metered manually (myLightMeter Pro), and shot with a medium format TLR (Yashica 635) on Kodak Gold 200.  

I took the chance with the old film kit on a beautiful golden hour, where we attended a s'mores cookout at the firepit in front of the Hershey Lodge. After a few misfires with a stuck shutter release - which actually resulted in a pretty nice looking double exposure (see above) - we were in business. The kids (mostly) cooperated with some poses before refusing any further photos.

It can't be overstated enough, there's something timeless about portraits taken on film. Without phones or other modern tech rooting a picture to the present, the photos look like they could have been take 3 weeks ago (which they were) or 30 years ago.

But here is where my children's patience ran out in having to stand still for me. However, the initial frustrations as a parent ("... will you just, for 5 seconds... just please stand still") tend to melt away when you see the resulting pictures. What could be more true to life than these babies absolutely not cooperating and spinning around in circles while you try to pull focus on a camera from the 60s. As a result, I now have one of my favorite photos that I've ever taken:

This is always how I'll remember my little ladies - my wonderful, sometimes uncooperative, little amazing beauties :)

But to contrast with a modern digital camera, here's a hip-shot with the X100v, taken as an afterthought as we left the park - with its amazing low light dynamic range and autofocus, and effortless ability to capture a beautiful picture with the click of a button, it almost feels like cheating. I didn't work for it, but I'm happy to have the picture, nevertheless!