Night – Trinity Church Falkirk
Just two weeks ago we wrote in this column that we rarely took photographs on a Thursday night. We look at and discuss them, we welcome highly accomplished photographers and learn from their expertise, we sometimes look at post-processing but we rarely produce photographs ourselves on a Thursday night. We also commented that, for many people, Smartphones had become the accepted means of producing photographs. So, on a Thursday night a couple of weeks ago we gave ourselves an hour to each produce a photograph on a Smartphone, then we looked and talked about them.
It was thoroughly enjoyable, so at our second Member’s Night of the season last Thursday, we repeated the exercise. This time, while Smartphones could be used, we could use a Compact, Bridge, DSLR or Mirrorless camera. Although modern day cameras, including Smartphones, are extremely effective in low light and indeed after dark some of us had taken a tripod. Trinity Church is one of the most historic areas of Falkirk providing much to energise the imagination and the motion of people, traffic and light in elsewhere also offered possibilities.
You might think that a few dozen people all taking photographs within the same area would result in many similar images. Not so, the resultant photographs still included street lit scenes, photographs around the historic graveyard of Trinity Church, and photographs taken within the building. This time movement played a part, and as has always been the case, using a tripod slows the process down and obliges the photographer to think more about composition and what they are trying to convey. Compositions were perhaps a bit more controlled and there were instances where the photographer had clearly waited for something to happen within the frame.
On Thursday 17th October we welcome Barrie Spence. One of the country’s leading Studio photographers, Barrie specialises in dance and ballet, commercial and fine-art photography. We gather in the café at Falkirk Trinity Church from 7pm onwards for a 7:30pm start.