Stirling’s Streetscape Stories: Photography Workshop

The photography workshop gave attendees a unique opportunity to explore Stirling’s history and architecture whilst brushing-up on their photography skills. Using the Stirling Photography Festival’s core theme of ‘Stories’ as our guide, we made our way through Stirling city centre, exploring the tales that our historic buildings have to tell, and learning how to capture them on camera.

Experts from HES’s Heritage Recording Team; Zoe, Paul, and Lewis, were on hand to offer us advice and set a brief:

To create a series of no more than 3 images that provide a narrative either within the individual images or when viewed together.

Think about what you are trying to tell the viewer with your photographs and how you can convey that using your composition & lighting.

Lewis told us about his professional journey as a photographer and highlighted the varied work of the HES recording team, who are out in the field photographing everything from freshly excavated Pictish stones, to cathedrals and former military barracks. After passing on some technical words of wisdom, Lewis handed-over to our Grants & Outreach Officer Rachael who highlighted some of the city’s architectural gems and introduced their stories.

After making our way around town we headed back to Made In Stirling for a lovely lunch provided by The Kitchen at 44, and shared our 3 images and our connecting narratives with the group. Everyone had picked -up on something different; shadows, close ups of architectural details, unusual perspectives, even linking images through colour.

Stirling Photography Festival was established in 2018 and is now an annual event, be sure to check out their website, and follow them on social media; there are exhibitions, workshops, demonstrations and talks on until mid-September.

To find out more about the work of HES’s Heritage Recording Team, you can follow Lewis on Instagram @scot.photo.record. The photographs and records they produce are all held on CANMORE, a huge archive that contains more than 320,000 records and 1.3 million catalogue entries for archaeological sites, buildings, industry and maritime heritage across Scotland. You can check out their online catalogue, or you can book to visit their archives search room at John Sinclair House in Edinburgh.

Thanks to Forth Valley Welcome, Stirling Photography Festival, Historic Environment Scotland, Made In Stirling and The Kitchen at 44.