Tag: B&W

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

A trip to Spurn Point (part 2)

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Today’s shots were also taken with my GW690, although on a different roll of film: Some Kentmere 400. Unlike the Fomapan 400, there were no defect on this roll, plus I avoided any potential bromide drag by using standard development with regular inversions. I’ve shot a couple of rolls of Kentmere 400 now and both times I’ve found it gives quite bright results and I have to drop the highlights a little. Not sure if it’s a feature of the film, or the way I’m developing it.

The first four shots were taken around the tip of Spurn Point showing the beach and dunes beside the estuary opening. In the shot of the dunes you can just make out an old sea fort dating back to the first world war in the distance. There are two forts: Bull Sand fort, and Haile Sand fort. I think the one in the picture is the former. The structure in the fourth shot is the sea traffic monitoring station. I’m not sure if it’s still manned at all, but the radar is active and the tubular antenna at the top of the building was constantly rotating.

Driftwood
Distant sea-fort
A long way to Sydney
Vessel Traffic Services building

The next four shots are of groynes and other sea defences, or what remains of them at least. These are no longer maintained, with the land now left to natural forces. You can see the battering that the man made defences have taken from the tides. I particularly like the final shot where pebbles have been jammed between the boards of a groyne by the force of waves and resulted in what reminds me of some sort of aquatic abacus.

Groyne remnants
Falling defences
Coastal erosion
Ocean's abacus

Fujica GW690 & Kentmere 400. Ilfotec DD-X 10.5mins @ 20°.

Taken on 24 August 2025

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

A trip to Spurn Point (part 1)

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Spurn Point is a location I’ve wanted to visit for a long time. It’s a spit of land that extends from the Holderness coast in Yorkshire into the mouth of the Humber estuary. It is a slender piece of land three miles in length, widening at it’s southern tip, but being less than 50 metres wide at it’s narrowest point.

At times during its recorded history, storm tides have breached the neck, cutting off the tip and forming an island. The last breach was, I believe, back in 2013 which destroyed the single road to the tip making it passable only by foot or all-terrain vehicles (such as a Unimog truck that ferries tourists to the lighthouse and back).

Road to the lighthouse

The Holderness coast, and Spurn, are subject to significant coastal erosion (spurn being the beneficiary of the material eroded from further up the coast) and this has affected the geography of the location over time with various settlements lost to the sea in past centuries.

Spurn has been used for a number of purposes over it’s history, including coastal defence, lifeboat station, and the location of lighthouses and traffic control for shipping passing in and out of the Humber. It is now owned and managed by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and attracts a large number of visitors keen to experience the creatures, particularly birds, that make their homes there.

Behind the dunes

There are two lighthouses still standing on Spurn, both now decommissioned – Smeaton’s high light, and Walker’s low light. The Walkers lighthouse stands in the mud flats to the west of the strip of land, it’s light aparatur removed and replaced by a water tank. Smeatons light stand on the land of the spit and is open to tourists, and you can climb the narrow staircase to where the light was once installed. Other noteable structures include the lifeboat crew houses, which are also empty, the tall shipping control tower with its still active radar, the old lifeboat jetty, and various structures remaining from wartime.

The old lighthouse at Spurn

I made pictures with three cameras across four rolls of film, so I’m going to split them into batches. This first set were shot with my Fujica GW690 (Texas Leica) on Fomapan 400. Sadly, the pictures were affected with a defect giving a lot of white speckles on the final images. This was also compounded by bromide drag when I developed them, although I’ve Photoshopped the worst of this away. Despite these setbacks, they still have a certain charm to them, I think.

Lobster pots

Fujica GW690 & Fomapan 400. Rodinal 1+100. 1 hour semi-stand development.

Taken on 24 August 2025

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

The last few awkward frames

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I had three or four un-shot frames of film following my the trip to Hull and I wanted to shoot them so I could get the roll of film developed. Four frames isn’t really worth a specific trip, so I decided to shoot them one morning after dropping my son off at work.

I thought the signal box at Kiveton station would be a decent subject as it’s not that far from where I was, even though I’ve photographed it before. Then, because I didn’t want to end up driving for miles, I took some shots of the M1 motorway. All three have turned out ok, although how interesting you find the motorway pictures I’ll leave to you.

I also shot a single frame of colour film on another subject, but I’ll post that another time.

Kiveton Park Station signalbox
Looking south
Looking north

Nikon F80 & Tamron 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD on Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 9mins.

Taken on 9 August 2025

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Around the old docks

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Many of the buildings in this part of gull have a blue plaque affixed, denoting their historic significance, including the Old Dock Offices, and Blaydes Shipyard, You can see a couple reading one of the plaques in the third image. I read the plaques as I passed, but it seems I neglected to take a picture of them with my phone.

Still, the light was nice, producing clean and contrasty photographs on the Tri-X.

The last house on High Street
Towards the old dock offices
Blaydes House

Nikon F80 & Tamron 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD on Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 9mins.

Taken on 9 August 2025

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

George Street car park

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Another example of brutalist architecture, this time in the form of Hull’s George Street car park. The multi-storey construction takes the form of a continuous spiral and it was developed and designed in the 1960s by Maurice Weston who had built other similar car parks.

As with many car parks from the 60s (in the UK at least), the parking bays were designed for smaller vehicles, meaning that some of today’s considerably larger cars – particularly SUVs, I would imagine, find it a greater challenge to fit. I’ve noticed similarly small bays in other car parks from those times, often with the disadvantage of concrete pillars that form part of the structure meaning that the bays cannot easily be widened.

George St. car park

Nikon F80 & Tamron 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD on Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 9mins.

Taken on 9 August 2025

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

Bascule bridges in Hull

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The river Hull has a number of bridges, most of which (in it’s lower reaches) need to accommodate the passing of marine traffic. As a result there are bridges of various designs in place, including swing bridges and also, as pictured below, bascule bridges. There are other bascule bridges along the River Hull, and I may try and seek them out at some point – they’re impressive to behold.

The first two pictures show Drypool Bridge, built in 1961 to replace an earlier swing bridge constructed in 1889. The bridge is decorated to commemorate John Venn, the English mathematician after whom the famous diagrams are named, who was born in Hull in 1834.

The final picture is of North Bridge (or New North Bridge), built in 1931.

While looking up the dates the bridges were opened, I found the website Open Bridges, which is jam packed with interesting and detailed information on Hull’s bridges, along with wonderful photographs, drawings, and blueprints.

Drypool Bridge
Drypool Bridge-2
North Bridge

Nikon F80 & Tamron 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD on Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 9mins.

Taken on 9 August 2025

Film photography · Medium Format · Photography

The traditional (not) red British telephone box

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One of the things that the UK is famous for is it’s traditional red telephone boxes. While many of these have now disappeared (or been turned into mini-libraries, or defibrillator locations) due to the rise of mobile telephone, a lot of them still remain, particularly in large cities. But in Kingston upon Hull, these boxes are not red, they are cream.

This is to differentiate them from the phones owned and manged by British Telecom (and before it, the Post Office). Way back before the Post Office took on ownership of the public phone network, it was managed on an individual basis by local councils. While the rest of the country ceded control, Hull kept a grip on its own network and has managed it separately ever since, first through the Hull Corporation Phone Department, and now through Kingston Communacations (KCOM). And so, while the phone box designs are the same as elsewhere, their paint colour is not.

They're different in Hull
Car parking and telephony

Nikon F80 & Tamron 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 Di VC PZD on Kodak Tri-X. Ilfotec DD-X 1+4 @ 20° 9mins.

Taken on 9 August 2025