Behind the Scenes at Ilford Photo's Factory

Far from dying out, film photography still has a place in many people's hearts. One of the companies which has warmly occupied this space is Harman technology Limited, which has been trading as Ilford Photo since 2005. This lovely short film documents what still goes on in their factory today. 

When it looked like digital was going to completely steamroll the film photo industry, the smart companies that maybe weren't as thinly or widely spread as their competitors manged to survive the cut and now occupy a tidy but relatively robust niche within the photographic industry.

The company, founded in 1879 by Alfred Harman, is based in the English village of Mobberley, Cheshire. For those that don't know, Ilford have been producing some of the highest quality black and white film products for around 140 years. Starting with dry plates and papers in the very early days, they produced their first film stock in 1912. These days, as well as still producing some of the best papers and film around, they are using their many years experience in R&D with silver halide technology to diversify into more modern applications such as biomedical science and nanotechnology.

The short film, made by the talented creative duo Sarah Reyes and Daniel Driensky of Exploredinary, documents the process from film emulsion to distribution at the Harman technology Limited factory. It's a sweet ode to a product that is loved by many all over the globe and to the people that work behind the scenes who make that product possible.   

Mike O'Leary's picture

Mike is a landscape and commercial photographer from, Co. Kerry, Ireland. In his photographic work, Mike tries to avoid conveying his sense of existential dread, while at the same time writing about his sense of existential dread. The last time he was in New York he was mugged, and he insists on telling that to every person he meets.

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3 Comments

Well don, and written review, suburb . I miss my Minolta and canon film gear.

Nice report. I love Ilford I'm glad I still own my film cameras. I've been in the business 48 years and as much fun as I've had with digital I'm going back to film. With digital you have to keep buying items as they out date, items like CD, DVD, CF, SD USB ect. you get the idea. With film I roll my own, process my own, scan it if I want or just made a contact sheet and store the film for the future. With digital if I don't keep moving my images from one media to another it may get lost, forever, it never stops. So I'm back to basics and my chemical darkroom or scan and print.

I think If I had every box of Ilford printing paper I ever bought the stack would be 15 feet tall.