Antelope Island on 35mm Film
I visited Antelope Island in late 2024. It’s a small island an hour from Salt Lake City that you can drive by way of a jetty. It’s a wildlife photographers dream.
I packed my film camera and my digital camera (Canon Elan 7 and my Canon R6). But, I was in a rush and at the last minute, I swapped gear from one bag to another. Turns out I forgot to put both cameras in the new bag.
I accidentally left my digital camera at home. But, you know what they say, limitation fuels creativity!
In the Elan I was halfway through a roll of Ilford HP5 (black and white 35mm film). HP5 has been around forever. It’s punchy, grainy, and has a grittiness that’s perfect for street photography. It’s, extremely forgiving. But it' isn’t very flattering.
Miko in very low light on HP5 with a Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L II. Approximate settings: 1/30, f/1.4—same roll as other photos here
When I got there, golden hour was still an hour away. There were a few clouds on the horizon and cars scattered across the landscape. While I was driving to a trailhead, I stopped along the road for photos.
This is my first photo from Antelope Island.
The cars were driving in an intermittent stream along the ring road that circles part of the island. This is an uncropped 2:3 image. If I were to print this or share elsewhere, I would crop out most of the sky.
Here’s photo two.
This feels like a very different place, but it was taken in the same spot, maybe a few feet away. The foreground was busy, so I tilted the lens up, placing the horizon on the bottom horizontal 1/5th line. That also showed the sky’s character—that it wasn’t an overcast day and the gray blanket transitioned into feathery cirrus clouds and then open sky.
The photo was scanned with a fiber in the top right, and it looks like the film wasn’t totally flat on the scanner, which is fine because I don’t shoot film for perfection.
I’m not a landscape photography guy, but if there’s one piece of advice I can give, it’s to watch one scene in The Fabelmans (2022).
(Here’s the link to the scene. It’s David Lynch’s last performance on the screen.)
Full disclosure: I have yet to actually watch, because, to be candid, I stumbled across it on Instagram reels and then YouTube.
“Now remember this:
When the horizon is at the bottom,
it’s interesting.
When the horizon is at the top,
it’s interesting.
When the horizon is in the middle,
it’s boring as—
[redacted to preserve SEO optimization].”
I did some light editing. When it comes to editing film I usually try to limit myself to what would be possible in a dark room—cropping, exposure, contrast manipulation, and tonal masking (dodge and burning).
Now in Color
I’m pretty sure that these are Kodak Portra 160, but there’s a slight chance they’re Portra 400. I tweaked the colors here more than I typically do—likely beyond what’s possible in a dark room. If you’d like to see what the originals look like, contact me and I can send you the original scans, just let me know which photo.
There were heavy clouds blocking the light. I started to head back towards my car, but stopped to take a photo of a family and mountains that were lit in the distance. But the sky started to break which you can see below.
I was kicking myself—wishing I had brought my digital camera. But, I’m happy what I came away with.
