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Given that it's single digit temperatures where I live currently, I was excited to spend a few weeks in beautiful, sunny California. Having shot digital for most of my photography journey / "career", I decided it'd be good to challenge myself by only bringing film on this trip. I'm so glad I did this; it was extremely rewarding. I can't wait to do it again.
My trip started out in hazy San Francisco. Here I loaded up a roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 into my trusty Nikon FE.
As I walked towards the coast, the light & haze just kept getting better.
At this point I had made it to Ocean Beach where the sun was beginning to set.
As I was walking through the dunes & grass, I was asked to take a photo of two people enjoying a nice evening picnic.
The light faded pretty quickly after this & my roll of Ultramax was only 24 frames, so that was the end of my photo walk. Unfortunately I was too tired the following days to get out and shoot, so that is the end of my photography in San Francisco. Luckily, I was headed for Southern California where I'd have plenty more time to get shooting.
Once I got to SoCal, I loaded up a roll of ColorPlus 200. It's very rare that the first photo I take on a walk is my favorite, but something was in the air that day. My mom & I were out for a walk around the neighborhood when we stumbled past this old car with a very picturesque cover showing one of the headlights. I'm really excited with how this one came out.
Nothing more came of that walk, but I was totally okay with that. Later that week, we stumbled upon a surf competition where I snapped this from the pier.
New day, new photo walk. This time I was out in some cool looking wet lands that was full of all kinds of birds.
Up next, we've got some Kodak Portra 800 which I probably should have saved for a later time, but oh well. My walk started off by running into this heron (I think?) who let me get very close. By no means did I have a wildlife lens available, so you can see how close I got. This was shot at 40mm.
And with that, I've finished another roll.
The final leg of my time in California landed me in Joshua Tree for a quick, two-day road trip. To start things off, I loaded up some (over-hated) Kodak Portra 160. Our first stop was Hidden Valley (not the dressing).
After walking around Hidden Valley for a bit, we decided to hop back in the car & hope to make it to Keys View before sunset.
And that's a wrap on that roll of Portra 160. We spent the night & woke up to enter the park from the opposite entrance from the day before. Given it was late morning / early afternoon, I decided to load some Ilford HP5 Plus 400. Our day started at the southern welcome center, followed by the "closed" cactus gardens before finishing at Skull Rock.
And that's a wrap. Really excited to (hopefully) shoot more film in 2025. I shot more film than I ever have in 2024, so I have some momentum going into the new year.
Until next time :)
