Leaning my bicycle against the wall, I stuck my head into reception and asked if it would be okay to explore the scrapyard and take some 35mm photographs. Mark, the owner, is a keen cyclist and fellow photographer; so we spent the next couple of hours walking around his scrap metal yard chatting about the history of the site and the stories behind each of the different collections of metal his company recycles. It was a real honour to have so much of his time on a busy working day.
I brought two cameras. My Pentax MX with 50mm f1.4 lens, and a Canon EOS 300 with a Tamron 28-75mm lens. I was interested in learning whether the Canon was any good. It was an expensive camera back in its day, but they can now be picked up for ~£20. I left the Canon in fully auto-magical mode, as I was also curious if I would get better photographs than I can take with the fully manual Pentax MX – but to confuse matters I used two different black and white films. The Pentax was loaded with Ilford XP2 Super, and the Canon was loaded with Kentmere. These are both 400 iso black and white films.
As you enter the Scrapyard, the first thing that jumps out is the old and disused Foden tipper truck neatly parked to one side. Mark says it’s one of the most popular things to share photographs of. He has thousands of followers on instagram and anything from the scrapyard gets a lot of likes.
Out of interest I took similar photographs with the Canon, and it seemed as though the auto settings wanted to keep popping up the in-built flash, even though I could see from the Pentax’s light meter that there were plenty of non-flash options for a well exposed image.
Amusingly there was a tipper truck Tonka toy next to the Foden, and I remember having a Tonka toy as a kid. I haven’t visited many scrap metal merchants, but I was impressed by how well organised and tidy Mark’s site is. Just down the road from the Foden trucks there was a stack of engine blocks, which had been carefully pieced together like a drystone wall. I was much happier with the Pentax/Ilford photograph.
The next set of metallic delights looked like discarded shell casings from a war, but there are actually glass bottle moulds. The diversity of shapes was amazing, and I tried to find recognisable shapes among the pile. These were both shot on Pentax/Ilford:
Mark continued to walk me through his site and there were some larger scrap metal items, such as the entire engine block from a ship, and a tipper truck that had been in use when Mark was younger, but had itself become part of the merchandise. I loved the way these object felts like dinosaur-bones poking out from the side of a cliff.
Adding to the seaside feel were the shell-like used turbochargers from a variety of old engine sizes, and then to one side was an engine fan facing me.
I like the lightness of the photographs I achieved with the Pentax and Ilford XP2, much more than the darker photographs I was getting from the Canon and Kentmere combination, but I’m still happy with pretty much every photograph I took this day. A huge thank you to Mark for sharing his time and passion for all things cycling, photography and scrap.
