Frugal Film Project 2022 - February

 February has been awful here in darkest Wigan. Three major storms in the space of three weeks with more wind and rain in between kept me indoors for just about all of the month. I was beginning to worry if I would get the chance to shoot my February roll of Ilford HP5 for the project. Thankfully the Photography Gods smiled upon me and gave me some nice weather on the last weekend of February. I loaded my Pentax SP500 with a roll of HP5 and headed down the road to Wigan Pier.

My aim this year is to get to know HP5 better as I have spent the last few years shooting it at box speed. There's nothing wrong with that of course, HP5 is a great film that gives me decent images at box speed and it responds well to filters. This month I decided to push it one stop to 800 iso and leave the fillters alone.

The day was bright with lots of clouds dotted about so I had to wait for the right moments to shoot my compositions around the Pier Quarter. I didn't always do this as I am an impatient so and so sometimes and took a few when the sun was happily hiding behind a cloud. However, as I had decided to shoot my film at 800 iso I got some decent shots despite the light being very changeable.

Shooting a stop over also gave me lots of contrast that took little processing with Affinity Photo to get the balance right. The blacks are deep and I reckon a few of these photos would look decent printed either on my home printer or a wet print in a darkroom. That's a whole new rabbit hole to go down and it wont be cheap....

There was a Narrowboat moored at the Pier and of course I included it in some of my compositions. The Leeds Liverpool Canal hasn't been a "working" canal since the coal barge Ambush delivered the last load of coal to the local power station in 1972. Since then the canal has been exclusively used for leisure and narrowboats like the one at the Pier on this day are either someone's home or used as holiday boats.

With the end of the restrictions imposed courtesy of our microscopic nemesis, I hope to see more narrowboats on the canal as life gets back to some semblance of normality. I also hope to see the refurbishment work completed at Wigan Pier with the pub opening again to serve walkers and boaters on sunny afternoons through the summer months. The Pier Quarter is looking good and the exterior work is just about done.

I had a really enjoyable afternoon taking photos at the Pier and had a nice chat with another photographer who was also taking some photos of the Pier Quarter. He went all in on digital as he is a professional press photographer and he was happy to see someone still shooting film with an old Pentax. It reminded him of his early days covering sports for the local paper and the importance of choosing your shots to tell the story of the football match. He gave me one or two more handy tips too. 

With time getting on I headed across the road to Trencherfield Mill to grab a couple of shots of the three heads on the exterior wall of the Mill and some of the machinery that is dotted about to remind folk of Wigan's industrial heritage. I also finished a roll of Cinestill 800 I had in my Nikon F801 whilst I was out and will hopefully feature that in a future blog once I have developed it. All I need to do now is decide where to shoot my next roll for the Frugal Film Project. I think a walk around Haigh Hall may be in order as I haven't been there for a long time.

Here's a few photos I took of the Pier Quarter and I have put them and more in my Frugal Film Project 2022 album on Flickr, you can visit using the link below. I hope you enjoy them.

Frugal Film Project 2022