Gala Bingo, King Street, Aberdeen

Last week, I was photographing Gala Bingo on King Street.

The building was originally Kingsway Cinema. After James Donald died in 1934, the four brothers continued the business and land was acquired for a large cinema at the corner of King Street and Frederick Street, the latter providing a separate entrance for the cheaper seats.

Notable for a spacious foyer, its Art Deco style and Holophane lighting system, the Kingsway Cinema opened on 1st March 1939 with Anne Shirley in “A Man to Remember”.

The Kingsway Cinema survived until February, 1963 and then became a bingo hall, the largest in northern Scotland. It remains so in 2017, under Gala Bingo Club’s and this has enabled the building to survive where others of such size have disappeared.

The photographs were for the manager, Fraser Calderwood, who is moving to another Gala Bingo closer to his home in Fife.

A lot of the features of the original cinema are still retained making it a nice interior to photograph.

The client responded within 10 minutes of receiving the images:

Hi Neil

I’ve paid the invoice, fantastic work. I’m so pleased with them. Thank you so much!

kind regards,
Fraser

Gallery

Technical info: The lighting was mainly available with 2 off camera flash units to light key features. Some of the shots were created using HDR (7 varying exposures combined in post processing). I used a Nikon D5 with a 14-24mm, and also a 24mm PCE lens (“PC” stands for perspective control and “E” stands for electronic diaphragm). The PC lens lets me raise the lens rather than tilt the camera which keeps parallel lines from converging – see example below: