Pinhole Photography Festival.

Back in early March my dad kindly sent me an email containing a link for the Pinhole Photography Festival in Edinburgh.

His timing was perfect as I was free to pop along on the following Sunday afternoon to have a look at the gallery and perhaps attend the workshop if there was space. As fortune would have it, I was able to join in the fun and games.

The workshop was held by photographer Kenny Bean who talked us through the art of making a pinhole photograph. He showed us images taken from a tiny camera, where a cartridge was held inside the photographer's mouth, to larger scale photographs taken from Kenny's outstanding Wheelie Bin collection.

The staff were really friendly, the workshop was definitely worthwhile (they even provided free use of the cameras, photographic paper and developing chemicals, which was very kind) and the gallery was very impressive.

I did have a go myself but my prints turned out to be very disappointing (what's new?) as I didn't really have a full grasp of just how 'wide' the pinhole range was going to be. Even when I was standing 10ft away from my subject of a tree it appeared as a tiny twig within my frame. Timing for exposure and developing is also something I need to experiment with but now that I've tried it I need to get making my own little cameras.

All I need now is to find the time.....

I've cropped out the subject so you can get a hint of what I was trying to photograph!!!

Edinburgh snow

Even though we'd arranged our trip to visit Edinburgh again to complete our "City Lights" assignment ages ago, we all only managed to get there by the skin of our teeth.

The weather was still and calm here but the snow was so deep you couldn't drive. Then, after finally making it into the city, the snow started and worked itself into a blizzard of madness. We couldn't defy the weather's fury so we had to give in and come home.

The weather isn't going to let-up for the next two weeks but, regardless, we're going to try again on Saturday.

The Hub [St.John's] near Edinburgh Castle - handheld while I was sliding down the hill


Stencil Grafitti down a lane [unfortunatley, I can't remember which one] - taken on my phone camera

Night Shoot (Edinburgh)

My first attempt at a night-shoot and I found it quite hard.
I was thinking about it too much and taking too long to decide what to do and where to stand etcetera, whilst the weather was too cold and rainy. I was also faced with people - scary, arrogant, curious and more - hindering my progress.

Anyway, here are a few images from my digital collection.

Christmas light columns of "The Dome", George St, Edinburgh

The Big Wheel on Princes St [traffic and people passing by], Edinburgh

The Big Wheel and The Scott Monument, Princes Street, Edinburgh [bus passing by]

Depending on how they turn out, I may add some from my transparancies once they have been processed.

Lily rocked my world

I took my analogue SLR with me to Edinburgh last month, to finish off the film that had been left in it from over a year ago (tsk tsk).
I put my yellow filter on it and took my first shot of the day. I suddenly remembered (I don't know how I managed that since I have a terrible memory) that the film was for colour prints. Ooops.

I do like how the photo turned out, though.