A Friday night out, in the kind of lighting which makes taking photos with my point-and-click gear an activity dependent mostly on luck. Great action shots of people dancing don’t really emerge. But this photo of Clare getting the first beers of the evening is at least notable for this being the point when she overtakes Joe as the most-often featured person on here — a status that, all things considered, she will almost certainly now retain.
It’s increasingly easy to find excuses not to go out on a Saturday night, or indeed a Friday or any other night, at least if ‘going out’ means ‘being expected to move energetically in response to the promptings of rhythmic music’, i.e. dancing. But I just about managed it at the Trades club this evening. And it was welcome enough.
The Striders are a local running group. Yesterday, they set out to run a 5km lap, on the hour, every hour, for 24 hours. This was taken at the end of the last one. Jilly, in the middle with the white top, did 20 of these laps — thus, she has run 100km (or over 60 miles) since Saturday, with a couple of hours of dozing at about 3am. I am in awe of this; if I walk more than about 10 miles these days I feel knackered and have to rest for a day or so.
Planet Glitterball oversees the fun and frolics at the Friday night disco in the Trades Club. I remember going out. Not necessarily coming home, but that’s a story for Saturday morning. Perhaps.
Red Helen DJs at the Nutclough City Limits night at the Trades Club every couple of months or so. She used to run the legendary Brighton Beach nights in Leeds. We are lucky to have her. This woman is one of the few people in the world who can get me dancing. As happened tonight.
This blog has simple rules, and only a few of them, but I stick to them, and they shape what appears in subtle ways. The one about only using what ambient light is present at the scene certainly does, and is the reason why there end up being relatively few photos like this one. I do have a social life… but I don’t have expensive lenses and I don’t carry around a tripod so in low-light environments like clubs, it’s just very difficult to produce decent shots. Still, this one isn’t bad, and depending on what happens for the rest of today (I post on Sunday morning) you might yet get another shot from the Trades Club’s ‘Spectrum’ 80s music night for tomorrow, too. A good night out was had all round…
A Saturday night out is about to start, not just for me but for many people. I’m very happy with this shot, an occasion where it all (composition, lighting, mood) turned out exactly as I hoped it would when I took it.
Being 42 