Antelope Island State Park – Two Cameras, Two Photographers

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Rainbow over Antelope Island. Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

One of my favorite places in northern Utah is Antelope Island State Park. It’s such a strange land! Antelope Island, which sits in the Great Salt Lake, seems like a world away from the Salt Lake City metro area, even though it is located very close to the city. Wildlife abounds, including buffalo, mule deer, pronghorn antelope, big horn sheep and many other animals. At one time the bison herd on Antelope Island was the largest in America. There are a huge variety of birds that migrate across the area. The water is often calm, and the reflections can be incredible. There are sandy beaches. There are trails that curve across the rugged landscape. There is a unique beauty to Antelope Island that draws me back. It’s one of my favorite places to photograph!

Antelope Island is also disgusting! There’s a certain “rotten egg” smell that can be found near the shores. There are tons and tons of bugs, including biting no-see-ums, brine flies (that cover the shore like a thick cloud), mosquitoes, tons of spiders (venomous and non-venomous), among other things. It’s pretty common to see dead birds. There’s plenty to love and hate about this place. I try to look beyond the gross to see the beauty. It is indeed an odd place, and one has to purposefully look beyond the negative aspects to truly appreciate it. I feel like it is a secret treasure that is easily overlooked.

My wife, Amanda, and I visited Antelope Island earlier this week. I brought my Fujifilm X100V, while she had her X-T20 with a Fujinon 10-24mm f/4 lens attached to it. For my pictures, I used my Kodak Tri-X 400 film simulation recipe for black-and-white and my Fujicolor Reala 100 film simulation recipe for color. I reprocessed in-camera a couple of the rainbow pictures using Velvia. Amanda had PRO Neg. Hi loaded into her camera, but she reprocessed most of her pictures using either Acros or Velvia.

Even though we used different cameras with different generation sensors, I thought that our pictures worked well together. I wanted to share them with you as a set. I found it interesting that for some images our vision was nearly identical, and for others we captured our pictures differently. Amanda did a great job, and it was a fun experience to go out and photograph with her. Antelope Island once again proved to be a great location for photography. Enjoy!

B&W

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Photo by Amanda Roesch with a Fujifilm X-T20 and 10-24mm.

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Photo by Amanda Roesch with a Fujifilm X-T20 and 10-24mm.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Amanda Roesch with a Fujifilm X-T20 and 10-24mm.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Amanda Roesch with a Fujifilm X-T20 and 10-24mm.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

Color

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Photo by Amanda Roesch with a Fujifilm X-T20 and 10-24mm.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Amanda Roesch with a Fujifilm X-T20 and 10-24mm.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Ritchie Roesch with a Fujifilm X100V.

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Photo by Amanda Roesch with a Fujifilm X-T20 and 10-24mm.

This post contains affiliate links, and if you make a purchase using my links I’ll be compensated a small amount for it.

Fujifilm X100V Black    Amazon   B&H
Fujifilm X100V Silver   Amazon   B&H
Fujifilm X-T20   Amazon   B&H
Fujinon 10-24mm f/4   Amazon   B&H

Film Simulation Review: Changing Light, Part 1: Velvia

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Wasatch Spring – Farmington, UT – Fujifilm X-T30 & Fujinon 100-400mm

Over the last few days I’ve captured a number of pictures from my house of the nearby Wasatch Mountains. I’m very fortunate that I live so close to such a majestic and beautiful landscape. I can see it from my living room. I can sit on my patio and watch the light change and the seasons change on the mountains. It’s right there! I feel very lucky to witness this and be able to capture it with my camera.

It’s been between overcast and partly-cloudy lately, with conditions changing rapidly and dramatically. It’s gone from fairly uninteresting to amazing and back to mostly uninteresting in a matter of moments. This has repeated over and over. I’ve tried to keep an eye out for it, and tried to be quick enough to photograph it before it disappeared. That’s not always possible, and many times I wasn’t successful, but sometimes I was.

The film simulation recipe that I chose for these pictures is my Velvia recipe (I also used my Ilford HP5 Plus recipe, and those pictures are in Part 2). These settings are bold and vibrant, much like actual Velvia film. I really appreciate this film simulation recipe for landscape photography where I want colors to pop. The mountain is covered in the fresh green of spring, and these settings are the best for highlighting that. If I want vivid colors, my Velvia recipe is what I choose.

The gear that I used for these pictures is a Fujifilm X-T30 with a Fujinon 100-400mm lens attached to it. I like to use a tripod or monopod with the 100-400mm lens, but these pictures are all hand-held. If I had waited to attach a tripod to the lens, I would have missed many of these shots. The long telephoto lens allows me to bring the mountains up-close, like I travelled into the mountains to capture these pictures, yet I didn’t even leave home. It really is amazing that I was able to make these photographs without going anywhere.

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Clearing Clouds Above the Ridge – Farmington, UT – Fujifilm X-T30 & Fujinon 100-400mm

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Cold Spring – Farmington, UT – Fujifilm X-T30 & Fujinon 100-400mm

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Francis Peak Veiled – Farmington, UT – Fujifilm X-T30 & Fujinon 100-400mm

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Mountain Mist – Farmington, UT – Fujifilm X-T30 & Fujinon 100-400mm

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Spring Green Mountain – Farmington, UT – Fujifilm X-T30 & Fujinon 100-400mm

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Mountain in May – Farmington, UT – Fujifilm X-T30 & Fujinon 100-400mm

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Mountain Radar – Farmington, UT – Fujifilm X-T30 & Fujinon 100-400mm

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Sliver of Illumination – Farmington, UT – Fujifilm X-T30 & Fujinon 100-400mm

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Spring Green Hill – Farmington, UT – Fujifilm X-T30 & Fujinon 100-400mm

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Wasatch Green – Farmington, UT – Fujifilm X-T30 & Fujinon 100-400mm

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Mountain Spring – Farmington, UT – Fujifilm X-T30 & Fujinon 100-400mm

Changing Light, Part 2: Ilford HP5 Plus
See also: Film Simulation Reviews