Colin Trow-Poole – People and Places – Friday 26th February 2021

Last night we were joined by Colin Trow-Poole presenting his talk, ‘People and Places’.

Most of Colin’s work is in monochrome, and he enjoys working on and presenting much of his work thematically, in panels. He began the evening however, by showing us a number of his landscape images. Following these he moved on to show us some of his panels of work.

These included Inside Galleries – the people and the architecture; Oradur Sur Glame, a village in France destroyed by the Nazis in July 1944. Over 600 villagers were murdered and the village set on fire. The village has been left as a memorial, and been rebuilt a short distance away. These images were extremely evocative and moving. This panel of images had all been given a special treatment, the Bromoil Effect which gives digital images a grainy film-like quality. Colin shared the technique with us and left detailed instructions on how to do it.

Other panels of work shown covered abstract – all reflections in mirrors and ceilings inside buildings; On the Streets – mainly people on the streets from cities around the world. His final panel, Suburban Portraits, was the panel submitted for his FRPS. This panel showed images showed people who live, work and beg on the streets of the UK.

Colin also showed us how he converts his images to monochrome in Photoshop. He also explained how his images always have a hierarchy of interest within them, based on tone, to direct the viewer through the image, and how he edits them to help to achieve this. He also demonstrated that he challenges conventional composition guidelines by placing points on interest on the edges of images and cutting off faces so he can direct the viewer to the point of interest in the image without distractions.

Our thanks to Colin for not only showing us his images, but for so freely sharing his techniques; an excellent evening.