Analogue Adventures: Masha with Five Hours of Daylight

Our series of Analogue Adventures from the community continues today with Masha! She chose to take her film cameras to Iceland in winter: guaranteed terrible weather and five hours of sunlight per day 😂 so let's find out what drove the decision and what she learned from the experience...

Masha - thank you so much for sharing your experiences with the rest of the analogue community! Let's start with your history: how long have you been shooting film and how did you get started in the hobby?

I dipped my toes into film photography back in 2021, when I decided that I wanted to get one of the Agfa Point and Shoot cameras and test my hand at shooting analogue during the NC500 road-trip. From there I played around with that camera for a fair few years, and it came with me to Croatia and even saw me get married in 2023!

Since then, a new camera came into my life and I well and truly spread my wings with shooting film.

Ooh what's this new love 📷 and what kind of film do you usually use?

I am biased as I have only shot with 2 (although the Pentax 17 on your website has been calling my name louder and louder, so maybe one day I will have more to compare), but I have been really enjoying shooting with my Olympus Trip 35. Some people might frown at it as ISO is limited to up to 400 and only has four focus zones, BUT I can’t say it’s a bad thing - it does make you work a little more and you need to really be aware of the light/environment/space+distance, so the photos feel more earned. Also the battery is solar powered, so you don’t need to faff around with a bag of batteries, which is a bonus really.

I'm a fan - these are actually my two Trips!

I think I’m a colour film user forever and always - it’s a mix of Kodak, Fuji, occasional Flic Film, I am also very impartial to Mr Negative’s Same Same but Different and Lomography 400 as I find their colours fantastic.

What made you think that Iceland in January would be a great place to take photographs? Or was there a different reason for the trip and the photos were a nice bonus!

Ha, I agree, it doesn’t sound like the brightest idea considering the weather and the fact it is off-season! It was actually my birthday trip, but I knew that it’s a phenomenal excuse to play around with some film (it was only 6 days, and I managed to use up 2.5 rolls of film…), which did turn out to be true.

Ah happy birthday!! So what were the biggest photographic challenges you faced on the trip?

I think it is actually just a combination of a variety of factors that are all under the ‘nature being nature’ umbrella, of which I was aware but it still somewhat shocked me. Firstly it was the daylight hours, sunrise was at 10.30am and it was already too dark by 4pm to take any photos, so the window for photo possibilities was quite tight.

Secondly it was the weather, especially in the second part of the trip. We were very fortunate to have had some sunny days, however a substantial cloud cover and the following drastic turn of the weather, including 35m/s wind gusts and torrential downpours did bring a few more technical challenges too, especially considering that the Icelandic scenery is already pretty dark itself (thank you volcanoes and lava rock).

I'm assuming you used your Trip 35 - had you picked specific films to help you in these shooting situations?

Yes I had my trusty Olympus Trip 35 with Fujifilm 400, Mr Negative’s Same Same but Different and Prism 400! The camera was a true trooper, and at times its ‘red flag’ mechanism did probably save me from a pitch black photo or two (yes I was indeed a little overambitious at times).

It also has some (promised) weather sealing - although I am not sure how trustworthy that promise is since this camera is from the 1980s… The film rolls themselves deserve an ode too. Sure, I was limited to 400 ISO as that’s the max the trusty Trip can take, but after being truly put to the test, all I can say all three have passed with flying colours. 400 (yes I was tempted by 200 for unknown reasons) was a great shout because even when gloomy, it was sensitive enough to have the necessary exposure for even the photos that had dark on dark with a sprinkle of extra dark to work out fantastically.

I think there was also a lot of ‘trust the film and trust yourself’ mixed in, with a heavy dose of hopes and prayers.

Did the real experience of some of the famous Iceland photo spots live up to your imagination?

Yes definitely - essentially the whole of the Snæfellsnes peninsula, as it’s a little less tourist bus heavy compared to South Iceland (where all the tours go), so I knew there would be more opportunities for good nature shots. It’s home to the Kirkjufell mountain (if you’ve seen Game of Thrones, you’ll recognise it as the ‘Arrowhead mountain’), and I was truly excited to capture it on film, but I did know that we were at mercy of the weather gods for that. Somehow we did end up lucky, with a beautiful sunrise that lit up the mountain, so the shots came out perfect.

I think the overall vastness of Icelandic scenery was something I was truly excited about, and it definitely lived up to my imagination, with the photos translating the sweeping landscapes really well. Not to mention the very small number of people in some parts - I have this fascination of shooting nature as if untouched by the human hand, and I think it was a perfect environment for that (not that I don’t enjoy having human subjects in my shots).

Sounds heavenly! What is your favourite photo from the trip and why?

Is all of them an acceptable answer? Probably not…….if I really had to pick, there is one photo of the landscape from the Snæfellsnes peninsula that does stand out to me - it wasn’t even the main ‘attraction’ of the stop (we were looking for seals…yes, it was January, which is famously not part of the seal season).

Walking back (seal-less), we watched the sun turn the grass fields golden by hitting them just right with its rays, starkly contrasting the snow and moss-covered mountain peaks and the dark, frozen-over stream. This was such a sight, yet not particularly appreciated by those around us (also looking for seals), and I felt that it was worth capturing it on film.

It’s one of my favourite photos because it depicts an Icelandic winter so well! Cold snowy mountains, the straw-coloured Icelandic grasslands and ice-cold waters.

Absolutely gorgeous. Then what is your most unexpected photo from the trip and why?

It’s actually a photo of the rented Jimny that we used to get around Iceland (not the most aerodynamic vehicle for Icelandic winds!)! It was quite early morning on our first full (and dry) day there. We had a short stop at a petrol station (middle of nowhere mind), as we set off from outside of Reykjavik quite early and had been driving in the dark for a few hours by that point.

Our car was the only one there, and the sun had just passed the horizon, so you could see its rays spreading across the sky. I wanted to capture that specific moment, as it felt like we were on a different planet.

The reason why it is unexpected is because I was essentially backlighting the shot, since I was shooting directly into the light, so I honestly expected the shot to come out either under- or overexposed (or even some variation of both), but by some miracle it came out much better than I could have dreamed off.

Congrats, that's awesome! Is there anything you’d do differently - from a photography point of view - if you were to have the trip again?

Bring a different camera and a waterproof case for it…..I think I lost quite a lot of shot opportunities due to light conditions (which were very dark…) and while I think the lower ISO film was fantastic for scenery and nature shots, it would have been good to have some higher ISO options (and a camera that would accept them) to capture some of those less lit and much darker conditions we had outside of the 5 hours of good light.

And bringing a sturdy tripod, sometimes it was impossible to keep yourself still in the wind gusts (even with the widest stance possible), so I think it would have really helped with reducing motion blur on some of the pictures, but thankfully such photos were far and few between.

What would you say to anyone who is curious about heading to Iceland to take photos?

Pick a different month to go? That is some solid advice in my opinion! I think while January is an interesting time to go as it’s cold and some activities can only be done in winter, it’s an off-season month for a reason. We got very lucky with a few days of breezy yet dry weather, but then paid for it with several days of wondering whether we will be blown off the road or off the side of a cliff.

On a more practical level (and it might sound incredibly obvious to some people), but bring a ziplock bag and silica packets. Iceland has waterfalls which have quite a damp ambiance…sure, but it also has very very unpredictable weather with not only rain that feels like someone is constantly and consistently spitting at you but also freezing cold wind. This contrasts very heavily with the dry warmth of the car - having a ziplock bag stuffed with silica packets meant that my poor little camera had a safe (and dry!!!) space to exist when out hiking to a glacier but also during its reintroduction to a warm and dry car environment.

Clever trick, I love it. What is your next planned adventure, and which camera/film will you be taking to capture it?

Staying local…well national for the next one! Hoping for some good weather to hike in the Lake District at the end of March, but have many very un-planned plans further out, which cannot yet be named!

But for Lake District it will be my trusty Olympus Trip and a mix of Fuji, Lomography and maybe a B&W roll to test out? [Update: you can now read about Masha's Lake District Trip!]

Thank you Masha. And finally - where can people go to see more of your photography?

Currently it is mostly on my main instagram which is @orlovaaaaaa but I have recently started a separate page for my film (@analogue.ventures), so there will one day be a page for just my film side projects too, what this space!

Thank you Masha! All photos developed and scanned by our lab 😊

And I hope that you - dear reader - have enjoyed this third article in the new 'Analogue Adventures' series! If you have had a recent adventure - whether a trip, a photo shoot, a photowalk or meaningful experience captured on film - then please head here to let us know.