Yep, it’s August, Edinburgh is bursting at the seams like some arts festival Mr Creosote, the International Festival, Fringe, Free Fringe and the Book Festival are all on the go, the largest arts festival on planet Earth. Fun if you are off and can enjoy it, bit of a nightmare for the day to day folks living and working here as just trying to get around is an exercise in frustration, pavements packed by slow-moving gaggles of tourists and Fringe luvvies, even the bus to and from work takes longer because of the busy road and the amount of clueless tourists holding them up. Still, on the other hand as usual it gives me plenty of subjects for my roving camera lens, especially on the Royal Mile where the Fringe performers promote their shows, doing little bits of their acts and appearing in costumes to try and entice audiences…

I came across these two Japanese performers warming up, just behind Saint Giles, a few feet away from the massively busy hurly-burly of the Royal Mile where the performers strut their stuff, looked like they were rehearsing and getting ready to go out and do their thing. They didn’t see me at first, walking around behind the cathedral and I started snapping away, then when they did notice me they kindly posed while I kept shooting away. If I’d gone down the Mile as usual I would have missed them, but on a whim I waled around the back to escape the crowds for a moment and found them rehearsing.

Who was that masked man???

This chap was on the Mile last year too, he plays some wonderful classical guitar

Tooting her own horn!

Few close up portrait shots of Fringe performers – do like the manual zoom on the current camera, gives me much more response and control to get closer up like this: