My name is Luke Wayman and I am a B&W film photographer based down on the south-east coast of England in Folkestone, Kent.
What follows are some photographs summarising both my home town and style of work, and some words about where my love of film photography came from and why I have decided to start a whole new venture writing on here.
FOLKESTONE
When I started to plan this introductory post I felt that the best way to to start was to illustrate my local area visually with a few select photographs and captions.
These images were all shot by me on B&W 35mm film (with various cameras) in the last year or two and developed / scanned at home.
NOSTALGIA
I have early memories of photography as my Dad was a keen photographer outside of his day job. His career was in horticulture and, unsurprisingly, the main subjects centred in his viewfinder were mostly trees / plants and so from a young age I remember being outdoors amongst nature with him and his cameras.
I was born in 1983, and this would have been late 80’s / early 90’s and so we are talking of course about analogue camera gear.
At a point later in my childhood, I can’t quite recall when, he built a partition at the back of the garage to set up as a darkroom. So from that point I had the chance to spend time in there whilst he developed films and made prints using one of those huge old enlargers that stood on the floor.
Quite a number of years would pass before I attempted to make any prints myself in this way but a familiarity with the equipment, the chemical processes and the sense of being in a darkroom for this purpose remained with me.
Fast forward to the early 00’s…I would have been in my early 20’s and my Dad made the fateful switch from film to digital. Almost overnight, as many photographers did, he intentionally stopped using the analogue cameras. Knowing that I had grown up around it, he offered most of that gear to me. His preference was the Olympus OM System so there were various SLR bodies, a range of OM Zuiko lenses (which I still think are superb bits of glass) and accessories that he wouldn’t use again.
What followed was my own journey into taking photographs on film, using one of his cameras at first. It was something that I found immediately interesting and exciting and of course later I got the bug for buying more film cameras. Truthfully there would be times during my later 20s and early 30s that I didn’t pick up a camera as much or at all, but photography was always a part of my life somewhere and remained a strong interest of mine.
Aged 41 now, I’m very much still into photography and B&W film specifically. I’d say its a passion now more than ever. I’m very lucky to live in a coastal location that inspires me to both get outdoors regularly and to continue making pictures myself.
INSIGHT
The social media outlet I have chosen to use as the primary means to share my photography for the last few years is Instagram. If you’d like to follow me on there too, please hit the link below, and if you do so already thank you so much!
I’m not leaving Instagram any time soon and don’t worry I’m not going to start ranting about Instagram right now. There’s a time and a place for that but I wanted to note in this post that some personal frustration with the platform has led me to set up and start something brand new.
I wasn’t familiar with this platform until quite recently, but I have subscribed to a couple of photographers that I already followed on Instagram who post regularly on here. ( and ). Reading their posts and thoughts together with their photography in this longer format gave me a motivation to think about it properly and ultimately put these words and photos together for the very first time.
Lucy actually gave me some words of encouragement through Instagram to give Substack a try as there is a great community of photographers and hinted that I would like it. It’s been a really enjoyable and rewarding process from the moment I got stuck in to writing this. So thank you!
Putting words together isn’t something I ever felt was a strong point for me, so it was always going to be out of my comfort zone, but I was keen to try out a new way alongside Instagram to not just share photos, but to expand on them and share more insight into my process as an analogue photographer here in the UK.
I hope to expand on things like:
Owning and using analogue cameras and a recent delve into maintaining / repairing them myself.
Thoughts on different B&W film stocks. Have tried quite a few but still have a firm favourite! (No spoilers yet…but you could probably take a guess…)
Home developing and setting up a darkroom at home
Experience of self-publishing photo zines. There’s 3 different ones out there in the wild so massive thanks to everyone who has purchased one to date.
And of course new and yet unseen Folkestone photographs on film! (When I catch up on developing the ridiculous stack that’s mounting on my desk)
I’ll be honest with you I’m not 100% sure how regularly I will be posting as I have a non-photographic full time job but for now I’ll sign off and say if it sounds like something you might be interested in following, then please do subscribe and share the word for me.
Thanks so much to everyone for reading! Life can be so busy and I really do appreciate your time.
And thanks always to my beautiful wife Helen for putting up with me having bottles of chemicals everywhere, developing film in the kitchen sink or bath and letting me take over our office room to shut myself in the dark for hours on end.
I think you are putting the words together just fine. And your photography is equally good! I just joined Substack the other day myself so thank you for the inspiration and I now realise I need to write a presentation. Thanks for a good read!
Go luke! Congrats on making the leap!