Leith, Edinburgh

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!

December

I'll start by explaining the photograph, it is the entrance to the harbour (haven in Dutch) at Scheveningen, The Hague. It has taken me what can only be described as a ridiculous amount of time to learn Port (left)  and Starboard (right). Even now I laugh at myself about how very simple things can trip me up. As a geographer probably the most embarrassing thing to admit is that I still sometimes use NESW (never eat shredded wheat) when I think about east and west. 

So back to the point of this post, apart from the pretty photo of a storm brewing.

All my living in the moment went straight out the window when I realised that December is here and good lord where the hell did the rest of the year go? No seriously, where the hell did the rest of the year go? I have stuff to finish and do, December is not a productive month. To many mince pies to eat and sweet tea to drink. :-)

I reflect once again on achievements made over the year, the new people I have met, reconnecting with those that I had lost touch with and personal achievements that I feel good about. It's easy to look and find the things that I feel good about, so I have been trying to deconstruct the parts of the year that I don't feel good about or that went wrong.

I was once taught to remove my emotions from criticism and to try to look at criticism objectively and rationally. It's amazing how useful this has been throughout my life. It has allowed me to think about any problems or criticism and not react "all guns blazing". It has provided a useful technique in thinking about what I could have done better and how this could have been achieved and can be avoided in the future.

In every December I look forward to the winter solstice. I have always felt that this is a much more significant day in the calendar than any other, the general thought of our planet spinning through a vast universe in almost perfect balance makes me laugh at how insignificant we are. So spare some time on the 21st December at 16:28 for the point where the day starts getting longer again.

Thanks for reading!