Senior Safari Location Search

This past weekend we took a little trip to scout out a new location or two for our senior safari for the class of 2021.  This one had been on my radar for a while and Saturday we just had to load up and go see what there was to see.  Over the years we have taken seniors on our safari’s to Atlanta, Madison, Dahlonega, ghost towns, rivers, waterfalls, mountains, Civil War ruins, old factories, and car graveyards.  Always on the lookout for something new we thought about taking one to the old Central State Hospital in Millidgeville.  We got up early and took a drive south to Milledgeville, two hours later we arrived at the campus.  The hospital grounds are huge and cover close to 2000 acres with buildings all over in various forms of neglect and decay, our favorite because it’s great for portraits!  We spent a few hours exploring and looking for locations to photograph.  While the trip was a lot of fun, very informative and the buildings are extremely cool,  it’s not a location that will work for a safari.  Well worth the trip to see the hospital campus and we recommend reading up on it before you go. You can do that here at these links.  And here.

Here are just a few fun facts:

• The hospital was open before the civil war and operated for over 150 years.
• The original name was totally NOT PC, and would never be accepted, thankfully, today.
• When Sherman marched through burning Georgia, he left the hospital untouched.
• It was, at one time, the largest mental hospital in the world.
• Ask around you probably know someone who knows someone who was a patient there.

These black and white images were taken with a Holga lens on my Canon camera.

Bentley Photography

Location Senior Portraits