Utah and Arizona with Sam Huddleston and Some Lomography Color Negative 400 Film

It's clear from Sam Huddleston's website that he is a super talented music photographer, capturing the likes of Motörhead, King Gizzard, Rival Sons and The Horrors. He shoots mostly with film and manages to perfectly capture the warms tones and subtle grain that only film can produce. We sent him some Lomography CN 400 film to help document his recent trip to the USA.

Hi Sam tell us about these photos you took, where were you and what were you doing?

In March last year, I was in America for a music festival and decided to explore afterward and see some places in the States less visited. I flew to Las Vegas and met my brother. We rented a car and set off driving into Utah the following morning, but not before a night in the worst Motel in Las Vegas’ - The Gateway Motel. I strongly advise nobody to ever stay there but do take a minute to look up the review my brother left for them online. We’d talked a lot about going to explore some wild, unique landscapes and Utah and Arizona were on my mind for a long time. It felt good to be back in America and exploring again with my brother. We were pumping out Queens of the Stone Age as we drove into an unknown landscape that felt like Mars.

How did you find the Lomography 400 CN film?

I really liked it. I didn’t think too much about which film I was loading other than I knew that the 800 would be better indoors and in low light. I was taking that second photo of the silhouette of my brother climbing the rock face when I ran out of film and scrambled through my bag to load another one as the sun was setting. Those mad rocks were just on the side of the road as we were driving along the way to another town. We had to pull over and have a look.

Why did you decide to shoot with film for this?

I love shooting film and the way it makes you consider and put more perspective on things. Having only 24 or 36 shots to roll through makes you be much more careful with each photo. Though I say that and half the photos in this series are taken from the roof of the car as we drove along the motorway.

I like the inaccuracy and abstract images that happen with film and I feel it captures the moment in an authentic way. That first shot in the series with the light bursting through those strange spikes of rocks was taken early in the morning at Monument Valley in Arizona just as the first light of the morning pierces through those peaks.

When you look at these photos back now, what do you think you managed to capture from the trip?

These photos tell the story of our journey on the road through a very diverse and wild landscape in North America. The few photos with humans or cars just make the landscape stand out even more. The colours are all over the place, and so were we. As we drove the landscape would change and change so much. We’d be driving through the heat of the desert for hours and then suddenly we’d drive up into the mountains that were covered in snow. We stayed near Bryce City in a motel and woke up and it was -9 with thick sheets of ice decorating the floor, it was freezing and then by the early afternoon it was steaming hot again.

To see more of Sam's work, visit his website samhuddleston.co.uk and check out his Instagram page samhuddlestonxp

2020-03-04 #people #arizona #utah #las-vegas #north-amercia