Another couple of months of hard work

Well, fancy that. It's nearly September, which means I'm about to get down to the serious business of photographing Samhuinn.

I'm really hoping that this year we can prove our worth a little more. Maybe generate some revenue for the society, maybe even get our photos on to the gallery in a reasonable time!

I'm looking forward to the challenge again and even though the work is difficult I'm really happy to be part of the whole event.

Hello, is it me you're looking for?

Hello, is it me you're looking for?
Originally uploaded by littledan77

When I saw this I thought to myself, 'Lionel Richie must have been quite worried to come all this way to mark his bin', but then I realised that he would have sent someone else to do it, which is fair enough. If you are famous enough to always be referred to by both your first and last names then you shouldn't have to stick your own labels on your own property.

Cavalcade Weekend

Cavalcade weekend was phenomenal. I had such a great time with the 80+ drummers and the pictures reflect it.

I must admit, at times (particularly after 5 hrs in a school hall with no air and 80 drummers) I had a few low points but the end result of the parade more than made up for it.

I'm so happy to have been a part of it and I'm delighted that I was able to contribute with the pictures that I took.

If you want to see them, they are available as a slide show which can be reached here

and here are a few of my favourites

DVDs are also available here

Training

I consider that I am extremely lucky to be a photographer who lives in Edinburgh. I have a real love of street photography and Edinburgh provides me with many opportunities to improve my eye in this area. My main failing at the moment is simply not getting out with the camera enough.

Garry Winogrand is famous for having exposed three rolls of film every day for his entire adult life. That's 36,500 pictures a year. When he died he left more than 2500 rolls of film exposed but undeveloped, 6500 rolls developed but not proofed, and 3000 rolls proofed but not examined (a total of a third of a million unedited exposures).

That statement is an example of how often one of the greats of street photography got out. I'm not aiming for that, and I'm not aiming for greatness, but I do wish to produce meaningful and evocative pictures, and to do that I need to use my camera more.

Festival season is upon Edinburgh now, the population will pretty much double here. Scenes of every description will be taking place minute by minute in the capital. I think that if ever there were opportunities within street photography this month is it.

The First Time In A Long Time

For the first time in ages I decided to put down the camera and just enjoyed the event. I was attending the Lughnasadh festival with members of the Beltane Fire Society. It was a great weekend in the end, even if I did fall in a river, sustain a number of minor injuries playing games and have my socks burned before my eyes by my girlfriend.

I look forward to not photographing it again next year.

Clandemonium

Saturday morning was busy for me. I was trying to get all of my camping gear together for a weekend trip in the Scottish Borders whilst at the same time trying desperately to catch Catriona performing on the Royal mile with Edinburgh Samba School. Once the rush job on packing was finished I headed into town and on to the mile. I walked just past parliament square and found myself surrounded by people wearing scotch bonnets with fake ginger hair. This was my first impression of Clandemonium.

Their idea was to gather as many people from the crowd as possible to make music and dance. There were various groups, or clans, marked by the colour of their bonnets, who were given different tasks for the performance. There were dancers, drummers, body precussionists and kazoo players. After a little instruction the performance started. It was energetic, fun and drew a huge crowd of people. For me and my camera it was gold. I could get right in the action and managed to get some really great shots of the event. Here are a few pictures to whet your appetite:

The rest of my pictures can be found here.

Just what I wanted to hear

I had a great chat with the samba dancers last night. They said that I could be wherever I liked. There's nothing better to hear as a photographer than the phrase "unrestrained access".

I'm really hoping there'll be some great images out of this.