At the second meeting of our new season Kirk Norbury gave us a contrasting presentation in two distinct halves. Kirk is a professional photographer and timelapse cinematographer who now lives and works in Ayrshire. He described how he his work has changed recently with more emphasis on commercial work, for example with several whisky distillers, and in his landscape photography with more emphasis on monochrome work.
In the first half of his talk he showed and talked about his monochrome images almost exclusively. We were shown a series of very atmospheric and moody images from the Scottish Isles, Ayrshire and Iceland.
Kirk demonstrated how concentrating on monochrome enable him to concentrate much more on composition.
Although his images are taken in colour and then processed to produce monochrome images, when taking his photographs he has his camera set up to only show a monochrome view on the rear screen. He also showed several monochrome images taken close-up to demonstrate the textures and effects of light. He demonstrated that in contrast to the usual practice of finding the best light at the beginning and end of the day, for his images highlighting texture the harsh midday sun is often more effective.
At the end of the first half he did show us some landscape photographs in colour including some beautifully evocative photographs of the Aurora borealis taken in Iceland.
The second half of Kirk’s talk was devoted to his timelapse photography. He showed us several of his timelapse films which varied from coastal landscapes to urban landscapes to commercial shoots of workers fitting new glass panels to a state of the art new build whisky distillery. Timelapse photography was new to most of the audience and Kirk demonstrated the techniques and equipment he uses. He explained why he believes he gets a superior result using timelapse rather then just shooting video in that with a series of high resolution images there is much more control over the quality of the final video. He did also refer to the downside of timelapse in that it, by definition, it involves standing next to your camera for often, hours at a time to obtain a result. However the quality and uniqueness of the timelapse videos Kirk showed us demonstrated how the result justified the time and effort he had put in. His timelapse videos can be viewed on his website at https://kirknorbury.co.uk/