Ilford FP4 | A New Favourite B&W Film | Sheepbridge Industrial Estate

It’s been quite a while since I shot any Ilford FP4, but I saw a batch of it in the fridge and so I decided I’d try some out in my Leica M6. The location we went to was the industrial estate where UK Film Lab resides; we’re very lucky to work on what’s actually quite a pretty industrial estate….surrounded by trees, on most days there’s an abundance of birdlife to be seen and heard, and on many a day I see the same photographer walking around armed with his super-telephoto lens and tripod. Many of the industrial units have small planted areas or lawns, and it just makes for a nicer, more pleasant feel to an area which has the sole purpose of being a home for industrial business.

One aspect that I particularly like about this location is that if you look hard enough there’s always something different to see; this time, the door to a small derelict building next to UKFL was hanging open on its hinges….it had either rotted and broken under its own weight, or it had been broken into. Either way, we finally managed to see inside and to our surprise it became evident that the building had previously been some kind of electrical sub-station. On the wall we found hanging a collection of handwritten meter readings going all the way back to the 1970s, and a key which appeared to be for the door. Everything else inside had more or less been stripped, but leaving behind curious structures and bits and pieces.

Walking further around the estate we found a small area tucked away that we’d not seen before. There were a collection of industrial units but no signs of life apart from a very conspicuous blue Vauxhall Cresta parked up outside one of them. Apparently these cars were manufactured some time between 1954 to 1972, but it looked like it was fully in use, unlike the yellow, engine-less Rover we found parked round the side, keys still in the ignition!

Here are the photos I took, starting and finishing at UKFL. All shots taken on my Leica M6 with Leica 35mm f/2 Summicron, and of course processed at UK Film Lab.