Edinburgh autumn

October 29, 2018

I travelled to Edinburgh for the first time in what feels like months (except for train journeys passing through). I was meeting up with a fellow M.Sc. student that had some free time before her journey back south ( @kmurphster ). It’s always great seeing friends from the M.Sc. course and hearing on how they are getting on with their careers and life decisions.

I decided to talk a walk along Princess Street gardens as I had some time on my hands and the weather was nice and crisp. It also gave me some time to think about some problems that I need to solve in work. The problem is primarily finding one good solution to loading all Ordnance Survey data into a PostGIS database, instead of having one workflow for each data type. It would be more logical to have one workflow that fits all data types, or at the very least uses one program without having to do a ton of coding.

I find that having these types of thoughts at the back of my mind being processed without me really ‘thinking’ about it can often provide a solution, or at least things to try. Alas, it appears I’ll have to spend more time actually thinking about it.

On the bright side I did get a few photographs of the autumn that has come over Edinburgh on the day that the clocks change :-)

Thanks for reading!

Leith, Edinburgh

March 21, 2018

I was fortunate enough to visit Leith on a very calm and crisp evening which made for some fantastic Amsterdam-esque reflections on the Water of Leith. This was my first visit back to Leith since February of last year. I was accompanied with @alycoste who regaled me with coffee and hilarious stories that kept us both laughing. Check out her instagram profile I am sure she will have some excellent photographs of this trip posted.

Leith is an area to the North of Edinburgh where the Water of Leith drains into the Forth River. It is a well known area, perhaps most commonly known through The Proclaimers 1988 album - Sunshine on Leith. If you haven't listened to any of their work I highly recommend it.

Leith itself is a buzzing port district now home to hipsters, part of the Scottish government and some light industry. It is also adorned with a lot of restaurants, bars, cafés and thrift shops. It is a nice area of Edinburgh to wander around should you ever visit.

Often these small trips are unplanned and a little spontaneous and I have found that the less planning I do for photography the happier I am with the results. Of course it could just be that I was lucky :-)

If you are on a desktop or large tablet the thumbnails can be expanded by clicking on them, thanks for reading!

New Years Day

January 1, 2018

Well, more accurately New Years very early morning.

Welcome to 2018, another year begins where tradition allows us all to make clean starts, begin good meaning resolutions and plan out the year ahead. Wikipedia tells me that some of the origins of New Year resolutions were started by the Babylonians who made promises to their gods at the start of each year that they would return borrowed objects and pay their debts. The Romans began each year by making promises to the god Janus, for whom the month of January is named.

I thought a lot in December about what I would like to pledge a resolution or two to in 2018. Inevitably I came up with resolutions that would fail within the first week or two. I found that setting achievable goals that would be difficult but not impossible, at the same time as being beneficial for myself, would be decisive in any degree of success.

Last year was difficult at times for various reasons so I am looking forward to my 'clean slate' of 2018. I hope that I can replicate the good times of last year and miss out the not so good times.

So, my New Year started at The Vennel, a lane that leads to and from The Grassmarket in Edinburgh, with friends old and new. Needless to say, I was there for the view of the fireworks. The first photograph was taken when the clock struck 12am, a nice little 3 second exposure :-) Click for the thumbnail for larger versions.

This was the first time that I have taken photographs of fireworks so it was fun working out which settings worked best while working under a little bit of pressure as the show only lasted 9 minutes. I used my Canon 5D for these shots and have a couple more that I will post on Instagram later. I also used an application called Halide for shots that i took on my iPhone and I was really impressed with how well it worked last night. I'll think about posting these later.

Also, a quick mention to @jack_zxr, @katie_smith80, @itslour and @alycoste for providing a great atmosphere and hilarity to the start of the year.

Happy New Year

Edinburgh

December 18, 2017

Edinburgh in winter; long shadows, low sun and short days. Bright lights, Christmas markets and fairground lights make the cold nights a little nicer.

I spent Friday roaming around the city, mostly with the intention of taking photos, drinking coffee and soaking in some of the atmosphere. It's been a while since I have spent a full day in Edinburgh and I was a bit surprised at how excited I was to step off the train at Waverley. Needless to say I had to make the pilgrimage to the Apple Store first, at the top of Waverley Steps.

You can pretty much trace out my day from the images below, started off by walking to Stockbridge to (finally) take some shots of Circus Lane, walked up to Calton Hill, then up to the university area and finally the South side of North Bridge to shoot the Christmas market and the fairground rides. At which point my camera battery died.

I took some other shots that didn't turn out as well as was hoped, hence why they aren't posted, but I'll go back for them before they turn off the lights of the winter festivities.

Memorial to soldiers & sailors from Scotland who perished in the Napoleonic Wars

The Festival Fringe

August 11, 2017

Little known detail about the Edinburgh International Festival and The Edinburgh Fringe Festival: they are two different festivals. It surprises me that people still clump the madness of Edinburgh at this time of year all into "The Edinburgh Festival". So what's the difference? The main difference is the programming policies. The Edinburgh International Festival principally promotes opera, music, dance and theatre and participation in the International Festival is by invitation only, issued by the Festival Director. The Festival Fringe has no selection process in its programming and is an open access festival for performers; anyone can present any type of work and pay a fee to the Fringe for services such as box office and inclusion in the brochure.

I thought I would give a flavour of the people and street shows I saw on a recent walk around some of the Fringe this week. It's absolute carnage trying to move around the city at this time of the year and I think this is the busiest I have ever experienced Edinburgh.