FILM ON THE ROAD: TOOELE
APRIL 5 2022
Last week I talked about how and where I take most of my photos, and more often than not they are captured close to home. I mentioned I’ve never really been on a “photo trip” up until that point and most of the time I’m just bringing my camera along for family trips or trips with my friends. However, since the blog is still in the past tense I’m going to quickly write about my first dedicated photo trip even though it didn’t actually happen immediately after I had the realization that most of my shots are from a round SLC.
Anyway, with that little forword out of the way lets talk about my first reel, albeit little, photo trip to Tooele.
Most of the photos are going to be from outside Tooele because we actually drove through Tooele then back to SLC, but for the purpose of the blog I’ll just say it was Tooele because it’s simpler and it sounds better than ‘Film on the road: Slightly outside of Tooele’. My sister and I decided to go on this little road trip a few years ago in December. It definitely wasn’t great photo weather, but I had the day off from work and my sister was back for break, so it worked out and we decided why not, it would be a fun way to spend some time. I brought my Nikon FM2 with Portra 400 and my sister had her Nikon FE2 with Portra as well.
Our plan was to drive from SLC into Tooele, stop in Tooele to take a few photos there then drive south of Tooele and wrap around the Oquirrh’s to drive back to SLC while taking photos along the way. If you aren’t familiar with SLC the Oquirrh mountains are a little bit west of the city and they separate SLC from Tooele and the salt flats that are on the west side of the state. Our plan was basically just to drive around them and look for good photo opportunities along the way.
This was a photo from the Saltair along the Great Salt Lake which we stopped at as we were driving into Tooele.
We also stopped in Tooele to take some photos, this is of an old two screen movie theater on Main street.
And after Tooele we made our way south to some dirt roads where we spent some time driving around, most of the photos that I took from the trip were from around there.
This post may be more of me sharing my photos from the trip than talking about the trip because I don’t remember the events all too well. I remember that it was exhausting, it took about 6hrs to do, we got shut down at one turn off to take photos at an old mine, and we ran out of sunlight on the way back. The only other thing I can add is that the FM2 was the perfect camera, it didn’t have any problems and it is always so much fun to use.
I think my takeaway from the trip would be to leave earlier. My sister and I went without a solid plan which I thought would be problematic, but it wasn’t that big of a deal as long as you go with an open mind and are willing to stop at random places or willing to skip random places. The most significant thing was that we ran out of time because we were driving from place to place, and we didn’t have a good estimate on how long it would take. So next time if I do this agan leave earlier because it’s better to be shooting during the day with harsh light then not to be shooting at all.
That’s all for this one. I hope you guys enjoyed and feel free to reach out if you would like me to talk more about the trip itself next time I do one of these ‘on the road’ pieces. As always thanks for reading!