Botanical

I'm enjoying some time off and lo and behold the grim, gray weather of the weekend vanished to be replaced by gloriously sunny, spring-like weather (although still pretty cool, if not actually frosty in the shade). Good lord, good weather on a week off? Gasp. And it's that beautiful, golden quality of sunlight at this time of year, not the brighter, bleaching sunlight of summer (well, when we get sun in summer in Scotland...) while the air still has that clear quality from winter, a combination which is especially good for taking photos, I find, especially of some buildings. Yesterday the sunlight was complimented by a wonderfully clear sky, like a blue crystal dome, utterly cloudless, as I decided to head down to the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Despite the fact I have lived in the city since the start of the 90s I've rarely been down to the Botanics, mostly because it's never really been near where I lived or worked, nor is it close to any friend's home I might be going to or any other place I might be visiting.








I ended up spending hours walking through the greenhouses, from the lovely original Palm House (above), which dates from 1834 and is a splendid example of the glass, iron and steel construction the Victorian period pioneered so spectacularly. Still gorgeous today - especially on a bright day - but imagine how much more impressive this structure must have appeared to the Edinburgh citizens of the 1830s, who lived in a city of tall, impressive stone buildings.In the Old Town towering stone tenements used the limited space effectively but also make for shadowed canyons; even the New Town with its Georgian splendour and much larger windows and wider streets still would not have this quality, a space flooded with huge amounts of natural light sparkling through glass suspended from a seemingly frail - but actually very strong - slim latticework of iron. Being midweek it was fairly quiet and I often had entire glasshouses to myself and it was delightfully peaceful.



















I shot far too many photos as I toured through the various public glasshouses (there are others which are for research) from the Palm House through tropics and arid biospheres; I've only uploaded a few so far and will do the rest later, although I also shot a brief video in each of the glasshouses as I went through them and I've edited them together into a 'virtual tour':

sunset

This afternoon, down where the River Esk flows out into the mighty Firth of Forth in Musselburgh, looking back across a very swollen high tide towards Edinburgh and the hills as the sun set behind the city and turned the world copper.







Funny, but although I've been on the beach on the opposite bank many times I hadn't been to this spot - just near the race course, behind the some houses, where there's a bit of a peninsula made from the clinker and ash from the nearby power station. And for some reason right next to the junction of the two rivers there's this giant blue arrow in a small park. Why? Turns out that it was originally put there right next to the river to let RAF bomber crews line up for their bombing run on a floating target out on the Forth. I had no idea this was here.

Burns Night

A happy Burns Night to you all; its the night Scots and millions of others around the world celebrate our national bard, Robert Burns. Burns Suppers will be held from the Highlands of Scotland to the sunny climes of Australia, from America to Russia (he's very popular with the Russians, who see him, correctly, as a man of the people). I think its rather wonderful that the life and work of a poet from centuries past brings people together the world over each January 25th to recite verse and song and enjoy food and another great Scottish contribution to world culture, the fine single malt. Here's a wonderful rendition of one of my favourite Burns works, A Man's a Man For 'a That, sung by Sheena Wellington at the opening of the newly devolved Scottish Parliament here in the heart of Edinburgh:







I especially liked when she got the normally boring old politicians to join in towards the end, not something you see in the House of Shame at Westminster. There were some cringeing royalist toads who whined that the choice of song could be viewed as an insult to the Queen as its a well loved libertarian anthem, explicitly celebrating the equality of all and pointing out the be-ribboned aristocrat may have rank and station but he's no better than anyone else and his estates and rank and status are worth far less than the words of the man who is free in thought and deed. Amen to that. Just remember please, if you are having haggis tonight, to make sure its a free range haggis, given the run of highland slopes and not some battery farmed haggis.

Christmas greetings from Scotland

After finishing work for the year I walked up a very snowy Royal Mile to the Castle gates. For the first time ever I had it all to myself, not another soul there for ten minutes, just me standing in snow that came over the toes of my boots, that soft scrunching sound that reminds you instantly of childhood playtimes in the snow. Just me and the cold and the snow and the Castle glowing in the night above the city, dusted with snow like icing on a historical cake. Below and around me views across the whole of Edinburgh, right out to the Pentland Hills. Freezing but incomparably beautiful. Merry Christmas from a snowy Scotland!

Happy Saint Andrew's Day

Its November 30th, Saint Andrew's Day here in Scotland; Edinburgh Castle and several other monuments have been specially illuminated with blue lights to recall the Saltire for the occasion. The mist descended theatrically when I was shooting this adding a nice, spectral haze to it all.

Memorial stolen

Only a few days ago I was out with my dad and took some photographs of the new statue that was part of an upgraded memorial to the miners who lost their lives in the old Auchengeigh pit. The site commemorates two disasters, from the 30s and the 50s, the latter being especially bad with a large loss of life, men lost in the cold and dark deep beneath the earth. A bloody horrible, dirty, hard, dangerous job at the best of times. The statue of the miner with his head bowed was unveiled only in September to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1959 disaster. And then the other day it was stolen. Yes, stolen. Some utter lowlife scumball bastards stole a memorial to the dead, presumably for the value of the metal.

There are still people today who remember lost loved one who were victims of that disaster, but that won't matter to these evil bastards. They must have been planning it, they would have needed heavy equipment to remove it. It was there when folks left the nearby Miner's Welfare the night before and was gone when a local drove past early next morning. I hope they catch the bastards and get the statue back, but more than likely they have some git as unscrupulous and evil as them who is prepared to melt it down for the scrap value.







It had been raining just before I took this picture and I thought the effect in the close-up was quite good, like a cross between the sweat of hard labour and tears. Its hard not to look at the miner, head bowed and not think of my papa whose body was broken from work in the mines.

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month

"Do not despair

For Johnny-head-in-air;

He sleeps as sound

As Johnny underground.




Fetch out no shroud

For Johnny-in-the-cloud;

And keep your tears

For him in after years.




Better by far

For Johnny-the-bright-star,

To keep your head,

And see his children fed."

For Johnny, written by John Pudney on the back of an envelope as the bombs fell on London in 1941.







The Remembrance Garden in Princes Street Gardens, right in the shadow of the Scott Monument; in the background were some anti-war protesters, although I should say they were quiet and not at all disrespectful; in fact I saw some talking to some old veterans. I don't think they had anything against the soldiers or those paying respects to the fallen, just against the concept of war, and its hard to disagree with that.










Some of the markers in the Remembrance Garden are plain, many have names or regiments or ships or squadrons marked on them. This one touched me the most - it simply read "to dad". I have no idea if the dad in question fell in one of the recent conflicts or half a century ago; I doubt it matters, the pain and loss and grief will still hurt as much.






This one was marked to 'Uncle Alex' on HMS Hood; the Hood was a famous, huge Royal Navy battlecruiser. During a duel with the German pocket battleship Bismarck she was completely destroyed; its thought a lucky hit penetrated the weaker upper deck armour and set off a magazine. She exploded and sank almost instantly taking hundreds and hundreds of men with her to the bottom of the ocean; only three sailors from this enormous ship survived. Some say one of her turrets fired a last salvo as she sank. The comedic actor and former Doctor Who Jon Pertwee also served on the Hood and had transferred off her just shortly before the battle to train as a chief petty officer, or he may never have lived to become a famous entertainer.







Not just historical battles remembered here but also the here and now as someone marks a cross for the men and women serving in Afghanistan right now.

blowing your own trumpet

In early to work, out late so a little narked; beautiful, golden autumn evening outside so decide to enjoy slow walk home, wander up the Royal Mile, camera in hand, coming across this bloke playing some jazz on his trumpet. Nice autumn evening, cool breeze, cool jazz, nice. Put some coins in his instrument case, took a couple of pics then just settled nearby to listen for a few minutes and enjoy it.

Setting sun, furling sail...

The sun is declining in the sky, time to ship oars, furl sails for another day, make all ship-shape and Bristol fashion







I could be wrong, but I get the impression that the tide may be out at this point... You can actually walk down the steps right into the wee harbour floor at North Berwick during low tide, although I don't recommend stepping out much further than the base of the stairs as the muddy sand is rather sinky.

Autumn in Edinburgh

Its Edinburgh, its autumn, its beautiful...







As I was walking through the New Town with dad for Doors Open Day we looked up Castle Street and saw two jet contrails describing a huge Saint Andrew's Cross in the sky above Edinburgh Castle. Legend has it that a vision in the sky before a battle 1100 years ago is the reason that the Saltire came to be the national emblem of Scotland (and one of the oldest national symbols in the world, I believe), so there was something especially magical about seeing this accidental creation above one of the great symbols of Scotland. Few minutes later or from a different vantage point and we'd not have seen this special view.

Home, home on the range...

Among all the acres of tartan on display down by Holyrood today for The Gathering (even by Edinburgh standards there were a lot of kilts and plaid) a single, old cowpoke, taking the weight off his feet for a few moments, sitting outside the Parliament building and looking over to the Palace of Holyrood and the Queen's Gallery. The contrast between his cowboy hat and shirt and the Saltire and Union flags and the old buildings across from him appealed to me and I had to get a shot:

Religious fundamentalists

"Anyone who works on a Sunday is making a mockery of God and His laws, but God says He will not be mocked. He has power to sink a Sunday ferry." No, this isn't some Islamic fundamentalist but some religious idiot on the isle of Lewis. His ire raised by new Sunday sailings which has outraged the bigoted, blinkered, backward, intolerant Wee Free ultra devout Christians there. These guys take Sunday so seriously the men often won't shave before church because that is work. And like most seriously hardcore religious freaks of any persuasion they think this gives them the right to dictate how others should also live. Now I make no bones about it, in my opinion these people are fucking idiots and bigots to boot - this is the same splinter from the Church of Scotland who are so against Catholics, for instance, that when a member who was also a government minister attended the funeral of a friend and colleague who just happened to be Catholic he was ejected from the church and not allowed to return. That's the sort of folks we're talking about - and of course all draped in a holier than thou attitude.

Now much as I ridicule these throwbacks - and I think they richly deserve ridicule - I do still hold that they are free to follow their religious beliefs as are all people. But not to inflict their own rules on everyone else. You object to work on Sundays? Fine - no-one is asking you to use the bloody ferry service. But others in the region do want to use it, that's why they have been campaigning for years to have it. Civilised people are meant to live and let live, so logic dictates those who don't want to use it because of their convictions should not use it and those who are not hampered by ancient superstitions interpreted by incredibly dour old joyless bastards should be free to use it and not be told by those self same, self important twonks what they can and cannot do.

And as for that quote at the start - well the first ferry had mechanical problems so of course these superstitious old fools claim Divine providence. Yeah, I'm sure god has nothing better to do with her time than make a ferry engine in Scotland break down. If that's god's will does that mean it was god's will that French aircraft should crash a few weeks ago? If so then that's a pretty screwed up person. And note the language - not enough it broke down, he seems to be eager for his little god to rise up in wrath against the infidels and drown them. Now if a Muslim wrote that he'd end up in Belmarsh under the anti-terror laws. An ultra Christian on Lewis gets to have that published in the paper. Those are the sorts of people I'm ridiculing and they damned well deserve it for spouting intolerance, bigotry and even threats of divine violence against anyone (which is most people) who don't subscribe to their narrow minded views. And they will cloak themselves in that tired, tattered old cloak of Respectablity and Religious Belief as if they are somehow noble. We need to get Wicker Man on some of these joyless buggers.

Caricature

Street caricaturist at work on the Royal Mile, spotted while walking home one evening; for some reason there's something I find interesting about taking a picture of someone who is in turn creating a picture:

Hopeful hound

I love the hopeful expression on this dog's face as it watches it owners eating away at a street market. You can almost hear the poor dog thinking "drop it, drop it, drop it..."

"Picture this"

Still on my rediscovering my love for black and white kick, took this shot in Edinburgh's West End yesterday on my way to speak to the Book Festival folks, the dome of West Register House which is the jewel in the crown of the Georgian New Town's beautiful and prestigious Charlotte Square. I took both a monochrome and a colour shot (mostly because the sky was such a lovely, clear blue) - which is better, do you think?








Personally I think this scene is better served in monochrome. And yes, I know I could shoot once in colour and then create a B&W version in PhotoShop, but as I've said before I prefer not to retouch my pictures other than a little cropping, alter contrast etc slightly, basically no more than I'd have done in my dark room film days, so if you see it in B&W here then I shot in B&W. I think grayscaling from colour in a photo package just seems a little flatter somehow, lacks the kind of silvery glow you get from proper black and white. Anyway, I took both to compare them.







and a slightly longer shot of the same scene taking in one of the gorgeous Georgian street in the West End with the dome rising above everything:

Brown is Watching. Apparently

Saw this stencilled onto the expensive wall of a Georgian building in Edinburgh's West End (tagging buildings is one thing, but really, street art wallahs could you not do it on listed, historic buildings, please?). I'd have thought Gordon was too busy watching his own Cabinet colleagues for sharpened daggers to watch us right now, but then he doesn't have to I suppose given the huge increase in surveillance and diminishing of civil liberties he and Blair have overseen during their corrupt regimes (for our protection, naturally).

Where to now?

Quick candid street shot on the Royal Mile, a young tourist couple looking at their guide book for ideas of where to visit next in Edinburgh. The Mile is incredibly busy now with visitors, but nothing compared to what it will be like come August and the Festival. And yes, I am still on a bit of a black and white photo kick at the moment, started off using it for architectural shots then decided I quite liked the way some street scenes looked in monochrome. I don't know why but I love capturing un-posed street scenes, I think it appeals to my sense of using photography mostly for 'honest' purposes (ie I don't rework them in Photoshop, usually what you see is what I saw, including monochrome shots - if its in B&W I shot that way, it wasn't in colour then grayscaled afterwards, I think that gives a 'flat' result) and my Gonzo Photographer ethos of not setting up shots and settings much but mostly shooting quickly from the hip at whatever catches my eye; not everyone's way of doing it (some prefer methodical set ups of framing, lighting and settings, I'm more of a spontaneous kind of person in this as in writing), but its how I work with my camera and I enjoy it. And with 31, 000 views on my Flickr stream I assume some other folks must like some of them too.

Heron

Walking along the Water of Leith, once a river full of industry, now a beautiful country walk in the middle of the city (and with some incredibly expensive properties dotted along it) we stopped to watch a heron wading for fish, its long legs moving in that slow, deliberate manner of wading birds. Right in the middle of Edinburgh. This is one of the reasons I love living here. The water of Leith passes fairly close to me and you can walk along its shady trees and use it as a quiet, off-road route to the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art and the Dean Gallery. Apparently some otters have moved back into it a bit further upstream from me, near the Water of Leith Visitor Centre (by the Union Canal aquaduct and rail viaduct), but I haven't been lucky enough to see them yet.

REligious ducks

Ever wondered how ducks go to church?

Riding on the beach

I'm usually more inclined to motorbikes than horses as a mode of transport (I think horses are beautiful creatures, but I prefer a mode of transport without a mind of its own), but riding along on the surfline on a sunny beach does look wonderful.

let sleeping swans lie

If you should let sleeping dogs lie then I'd imagine you should certainly not disturb snoozing swans, given how grumpy and bad tempered they can be even when fully awake, let alone being roused from a pleasant nap. This was as close as I dared get to a couple of slumbering swans basking in the last golden rays of the setting sun by the Union Canal not far from my home, contentedly snoozing just a couple of feet from all the walkers, joggers, cyclists and canoeists. Lovely to have this so close by in the middle of a heavily populated part of a major city. If you click on the pic you can go to my Flickr stream and click the 'all sizes' buttons to see the much larger version; it was worth edging slowly closer to the animal as I managed to get some details of the feathers into the bigger version.

some pigs are more equal than others

The new artwork on the side of Saint John's church in Edinburgh makes a nice comment on the greedy pigs-in-the-trough mentality of so many of the right dishonourable Members of Parliament who've been caught with their sticky trotters in the cookie jar, grabbing every bit of tax payer's money they could rip off.

Home of Robert Louis Stevenson

Had dad through for the day over the weekend and we went wandering around some parts of the New Town taking pictures, including the home of one of my favourite writers, Robert Louis Stevenson:











In case you are wondering the old fashioned bell-pull on the bottom left, instead of stating the family name as usual simple says " private house, not a museum".

Scottish mining museum

When I was off earlier this month I went down the coast a little outside Edinburgh to the Scottish Mining Museum, which I've been meaning to go to for ages (the 26 bus right from the city centre takes you to right to the entrance). Annoyingly the visitor centre and inside attractions and tours weren't up and running, even though I had checked the website before going down and it indicated everything was, but I did get to wander around all the surface remains and had the place largely to myself at the time too, quite atmospheric, so quiet now but once teeming with hundreds and hundreds of men working in the mine, the mighty boilers of the power house and the nearby brick kilns. Shot quite a lot of photos and only now uploading them - the first batch are on my Flickr page, with more to follow, and also a short video 360 panorama:

Union of South Africa

Here's what dad and I saw steaming in to Edinburgh this afternoon, steam whistle blowing, smoke and steam billowing, Union of South Africa, an A4 Pacific steam loco (the class which set the world steam engine speed record) with the streamliner casing. I know the streamlining was more about image and marketing and didn't give much of an advantage in reality, but ye gods its lovely. Elegance and power from a different era when travelling the length of our islands drawn by some great steel, fire breathing dragon like this was an adventure and not the boring, over priced chore its become now.




(click the pic for the larger version)

Imagine charging down from Edinburgh along Britain's east coast mainline to London behind one of these magnificent engines, the sea on your left as you roar down towards Berwick upon Tweed, the roar of the engine resounding across the landscape, easily pulling a long line of carriages with its enormous power, crossing the border, cruising into Northern England, passing ancient York, surging south on steel and iron and fire and water at a speed most people of the time would never encounter anywhere else in their life (this series could easily cruise beyond 100mph) until you arrive in King's Cross in the middle of London. Before most people had cars, long before motorways existed it would have been remarkable to travel so swiftly, to go from one great capital city of the United Kingdom to another in just a few hours, and in comfort and style as well. God, that was the era to travel by train in this country...

Out and about

I've kept myself pretty busy over my week off, between the book group, movies, out catching up with folks and enjoying a drink, more movies and also a lot of wandering around enjoying the burst of good weather, ambling around the city and also down the coast, taking a shedload of photos as I did so (about 2.5 gigs worth of pics in a few days, I'll need another week off to sort them!), which has kept me occupied and active instead of sitting around brooding, so its been helpful. Walking past Edinburgh University the other day I decided to take some snaps of the skaters and skateboarders there - its a popular area for it in Bristo Square in front of the Uni. Before you think I am getting all arty with the move to black and white photography, I had been down in the Royal Mile earlier in the day taking some architecture pics and moved to B&W for those as I think it suits some buildings better and had taken several pics of the skaters before I realised I hadn't changed back to colour mode.





Yes, I could avoid that altogether by shooting in colour then greyscaling in Photoshop afterwards, but I think that's never as good as shooting in B&W to begin with. I'm not sure if that's just a subjective opinion because if I greyscale a colour pic I'll always know it started out colour, but anyway, if I want B&W then I'll shoot that way rather than change it on the computer later (besides I do very little modification of my pics, I'm a Gonzo photographer, I take pics of things I see and try to reproduce what caught my attention, not spend 6 hours filtering and altering it in Photoshop, not that I have anything against that, but its just not what I normally do, I like to keep my pics fairly honest as photographs and not overly manipulate them other than tweak contrast or cropping, things I'd do back in my dark room days at college).





So the upshot was I took several pics before I realised I was in B&W mode then looked at the images on the camera's screen and thought, you know what, I think this scene looks cooler in B&W, so I kept it that way. And ended up doing a bunch more B&W as well, not done much monochrome since my college years when I did my own prints (back in the days of actual film with my ancient but highly serviceable Praktica) and I suddenly found myself thinking, why haven't I done more B&W in the digital years? I used to love the way monochrome can bring a different light to some subjects and yet here I was doing hundreds of photos a year onto my Flickr and hardly any in B&W, like I had forgotten about it. I think I just revived my taste for it...

sunset in Edinburgh

Crossing North Bridge a few days ago after work, the setting spring sun splashed across these statues with a lovely, warm, copper light:

Spring blooms

As the burst of warm, spring weather suddenly fades back into being cold and wet, a little reminder of the nice weather last week and the sudden burst of colour as flowers emerge from the thawed soil seeking the light again:

Steam power

Here's what my dad and I went to see arriving then departing from Edinburgh the last couple of weekends, a brand new steam locomotive (built to the old designs, but new build), the Tornado, created by the A1 Steam Trust. Not a static museum piece but a living, breathing, working locomotive, undergoing her shake down runs, here steaming through Edinburgh hauling a huge line of passenger carriages with utmost ease due to the raw power of such a huge locomotive. She drew a fair crowd and made quite a sight, steam whistle blowing, the roar of the engine and the sheer power and elegant beauty...

horses on the beach

Down on the beach near Yellowcraig by the Fidra Lighthouse, walking along the long shore towards North Berwick, it brightened up as a couple of riders on horseback came along the beach: