slightly out of focus

so we took a hike up to salisbury crags for one last view of the city ... what we did not anticipate was the drastic change in sunset times when you are so far from the equator ... when we first got here the sun would not set until 10:30 pm we got to the crags around 9:30pm and had almost missed dusk ... i did not bring a tripod ... as we hiked up some of us separated and all i could hear as i climbed the steep hill was my own breath and the wind the city lights took on an eerie silence ... and though i wish i had a tripod i feel these images might work better to capture the strange silent mood of sitting above the city on a quiet and chilly sunday night

gratuitous puppy blog

so i have been having a lot of great shoots finishing up my classwork in scotland. but the thing is this country is full of adorable and mostly well-behaved dogs, which for me are hard to photograph. here are a couple pictures of some dogs that belonged to a gamekeeper who took me out on his estate the other day!

sikhs in scotland

for one of my stories i found a sikh gurdwara, in leith (edinburgh). everyone was very welcoming and kind, and it was wonderful to sit in on the sunday diwan service, as well as an information session they had to educate people about their religion as part of the festival of spirituality, and their guru ka langar (communal vegetarian meal). the one thing i have left to do for this story is visually set it in scotland.

wasted at the royal mile

in the shadow of hume

in the rain

waiting for the train

one day shoot: sterling

so it might sound easy, but it can be kind of overwhelming... every thursday we have our 'one-day-shoot' where we go to a random town, find a story and shoot it in 72 images... that means that 15 photojournalism students are swarming a town, in this case sterling, on a rainy day in scotland asking for someone to let them in and make some photos... after having no luck at the cemetery or churches in sterling, i found a great group of guys at infamous ink tattoos and piercing... here are some of my images (the last two were not part of the 72 story, but it was just fun to photograph a piercing)

artists 2

and there is so much more than just music and street performers at these edinburgh festivals (it is not one but many festivals descending upon the city)... one of my favorite places here the forest cafe is hosting and event titles 'i am not a poet' in their gallery space.  i got there just as the poet who goes by the name seekers of lice was finishing her installation around three in the afternoon, she had started he work around 10am

artists 1

so edinburgh festival time is crazy... the royal mile is crowded full of tourists and buskers vying for their attention and spare change... it was a little calmer out on the grassmarket where  i found ronnie rootsie singing the blues in his rough scratchy and soulful voice

burry man 2

if you want to know more about the Burry Man, see my previous post. this was such a cool event to watch: from the fact that i was seeing a man covered in burrs paraded through his town from about 8am until 6pm to watching the people looking from their windows and gathering on the streets to watch him. children's expressions of curiosity fear and excitement (overhearing one mother say, "no it's not a tree, it's a man"). as a child who was scared of department store santa's i cannot imagine what this must have looked like to young eyes! i also overheard the children's parents reminiscing about how they had grown up watching the burry man, and seemed so happy to share the tradition with their children. and john was wonderful always stopping to pose for pictures with people of all ages. his family also added to the tradition of opening up their house to a lunch party on the Burry Man's route serving food and drink to celebrate their son, the Burry Man.

burry man 1: dressing

The Burry Man is a South Queensferry Tradition, as one onlooker, Scott Liddell said, "It's not a Scotland thing, it's not an Edinburgh thing. It's a South Queensferry thing." The tradition has not always been annual but literature on the event says that people can trace the event back almost 900 years. No one quite knows what it means but that it definitely says something about the town's relationship with the countryside. John Nicol, who grew up in South Queensferry and now lives in Leith working as a graphic designer, has been the Burry Man since 1999, and this year was his last. Being he Burry Man is a physically demanding job. Family and friends dress the Burry Man up in over 11,000 burrs from the fields surrounding South Queensferry; and two of his close friends parade him around town with young boys ringing a bell shouting "Hip Hip Hooray! It's the Burry Man today!", through neighborhoods with people standing outside to greet him or pose for pictures, others waiting with a dram of whisky for him and his friends. They start dressing him around 7am, and he is covered in burrs until after 6pm.

Here are some images from the dressing:

on a hill

editing... and going through my images of the past week... this figure caught my eye while we were atop the salisbury crags overlooking edinburgh

on a broke bus...

the bus broke down on the way to the Moy Highland games outside of Inverness, to the amusement of the old people on the bus, i documented the event.

in a fog

we traveled up the salisbury crags in holyrood park, edinburgh for a beautiful view of the city which was soon totally enveloped by a fog that rolled in from the water.

edinburgh night 3

the close

i walked down an alley, a "close", and took pictures of other people's pictures...