I took a trip to Europe with my kids in August, 2018. The only proper camera I brought (aside from my phone) was a Contax iiia with the Zeiss Opton 50mm 1.5 that I’d got as a birthday gift to myself a month or so prior (from Central Camera in Chicago). I’d run a couple test rolls through it, but with the 35mm it came with when I bought it. So I knew the camera worked. I just didn’t know what kind of results I would get.
It was really important to me that I dive into experiencing these cities with my kids, which is why I chose to shoot film over digital. What I ended up with was a sense of being more connected to the places we visited rather than the machine in my hand, and the shots themselves bring me back to how I felt while there much more than digital photos have ever done. A lot of our days there felt magical, a little surreal. Slightly hazy. Probably because it was Amsterdam, and also because it was relentlessly hot that summer.
Let’s start with Amsterdam. Budapest, Prague, Salzburg and Vienna to follow.
