Tag Archives: Edinburgh

Exercise 3.2 – Postcard Views

At first, I collected a small number of cards when coming to Edinburgh for appointments, but found that the number of different cards available was limited, possibly due to the fact that fewer cards are being sent. I resorted instead to using a collection of about 100 postcards of Edinburgh I purchased through eBay. I sorted these into select piles where the postcard presented a certain view or theme. Quickly it became clear that certain visual ‘tropes are in use when presenting a tourists eye view of Edinburgh. The main ones being;

Edinburgh Castle
The Military Tattoo
Old town/Royal Mile
Holyrood Palace
New Town
Princes Street
Scott Monument/North British Hotel
Arthurs Seat
Calton Hill

In some cases, a scene from a card would encompass three or more tropes at the same time. They reinforced some already known ‘standard’ views that most people take into account when visiting Edinburgh and which are overlooked by the locals.

Discarding the subject-specific cards and only examining the landscape images presented in the cards; we are offered a view of a homogenous city spiraling around the twin heights of the Castle and Arthurs Seat looking inwards over the Old Town and the New Town. The city presented in these images, either by day or by night, is of picture-perfect days of the city. By day covered with a golden blanket of light, buildings and surrounding greenery are bathed in summer glory, even the shadows are thin, weak, blue blobs on the scene, cast by the massive protrusion of castle or high building. By night the city glows in bright phosphorus and arc lights while the practically cloudless sky deepens into an orange-red sunset. The city is presented without its populace or its visitors, a wide expanse of old and new ready for exploration. Viewers looking at the card are presented with a model scale view of the city, all the landmarks squeezed into one scene. The tourist industry view of a city rolling along ready to welcome them to the sights and show them around, no binmen or street sweepers here.

This idealised view is pushed upon visitors whether it be the tartan chocolate box view of Scotland with its heather and its bagpipe players on every corner, or the newer “Harry Potter” themed kitsch being thrown up in every empty shop. Like Faye Godwin suggests there is a polarisation between those living and working in the city and those who come to enjoy it for its leisure and culture. This can easily be seen in the protests arriving at the city planner office as citizens of the city try to prevent the destruction of the city’s history so that more hotels and student apartments can be built. (SaveLeithwalk.org) One particular example is the ongoing court case where an apartment owner living in America is trying to prevent the city form stopping her letting the apartment all year round as an AirBnB apartment which is causing strife with the locals living around what they describe as a ‘party flat’ (Evening News, Aug 2018). The profusion of high rents has pushed most of the city centre out of reach of the locals who struggle to cover the rising costs.

The reality of the city is far from the images presented on these cards; windy, cold, wet, gray and damp. Dirty buildings covered with dust and exhaust fumes, crowded streets as people hurry from one destination to another. My memories of the city change, from a small boy in wonderment of the Scott monument and the quiet of Princes Street gardens, to the noise and glare of a Ferris wheel towering over the Scott monument and the New Town below. Crowded streets of the New Town and the Old Town strewn with rubbish, closes stacked high with bins and refuse bags. The pavements filled with hen and stag parties are they wander from pub to pub before funneling into nightclubs.

The city is more than just four streets, a collection of close together pubs and some tartan history. It reaches from the edge of the Forth almost all the way into the Pentlands, areas with little or no visiting tourists, places where landscape, city, and history have melded together only to be seen perhaps by the ‘gentleman stroller’.

Can a location well known to you, still be seen through the eyes of a tourist? Yes, quite easily. It is normal when living or working in a location that you invariably take the same route back and forth every day. Only when roads are closed or building work being done do you take notice of some differences. However, like the gentlemen strollers, if you take a different route, go down a lane you normally pass, go left instead of right or even just look up at the buildings around as you pass and you will find things that you have failed to notice because they have become blasé. When this happens you return to the same state as a tourist, looking at the landscape with new eyes, seeing for the first time.

Considering Graham Clarkes comments, I would suggest that the maker of landscape images is not always the outsider or the tourist. Nowadays a lot of tourist photography is based around the selfie, the individual or group inserting themselves into the scene both for memory and for proof or validation of their visit. In this case, the photographer is no longer capturing the spectacle for its own sake, but purely inserting themselves in the image for pleasure.

From personal experience, it is not only a number of visits to a location but also using local knowledge to obtain a different view and know when the light or weather conditions will be suitable for photographing. When visiting a location for the first time, I personally do not photograph. Instead, I look around, up and down and take in the scene. I look at it with tourist’s eyes, seeing the beauty and take pleasure in the sights. I then sit and think about what I have seen and whether or not it is a suitable subject; sometimes I return and photograph anyway, adding to my collection of private images but at other times, repeated visits are done to look in every direction to see what I believe should be captured with the scene and what I want to present in the final image.

References

The Guardian – Martin Parr – Parrworld. (2009). The Guardian – Martin Parr – Parrworld. [Online Video]. 12 November 2009. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_NCLuo-iKA. [Accessed: 18 September 2018].

Council plans crackdown on Airbnb in Edinburgh – Edinburgh Evening News. 2018. Council plans crackdown on Airbnb in Edinburgh – Edinburgh Evening News. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/politics/council-plans-crackdown-on-airbnb-in-edinburgh-1-4409990. [Accessed 26 September 2018].

The Scottish Sun. 2018. California woman banned from renting out Edinburgh flat on Airbnb launches legal appeal amid fury over ‘party flats’. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/3101491/nicola-golden-edinburgh-airbnb-banappeal-party-flat/. [Accessed 26 September 2018].

Neighbour’s gripe with Airbnb flat owner ‘5000 miles away’ from Edinburgh sparks probe – Edinburgh Evening News. 2018. Neighbour’s gripe with Airbnb flat owner ‘5000 miles away’ from Edinburgh sparks probe – Edinburgh Evening News. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/neighbour-s-gripe-with-airbnb-flat-owner-5000-miles-away-from-edinburgh-sparks-probe-1-4789074. [Accessed 26 September 2018].

Edinburgh rents rise 40 per cent in seven years – Edinburgh Evening News. 2018. Edinburgh rents rise 40 per cent in seven years – Edinburgh Evening News. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/business/edinburgh-rents-rise-40-per-cent-in-seven-years-1-4576176. [Accessed 26 September 2018].

Edinburgh set for new US-style rent control powers. 2018. Edinburgh set for new US-style rent control powers. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.djalexander.co.uk/news/587/edinburgh-set-for-new-usstyle-rent-control-powers. [Accessed 26 September 2018].

Save Leith walk – Please help us stop the demolition. 2018. Save Leith walk – Please help us stop the demolition. [ONLINE] Available at: http://saveleithwalk.org/. [Accessed 26 September 2018].

Assignment 2 – Attempt 1 – The Journey

Concept

After reading the assignment requirements, I first selected a few ideas and jotted them down. After examining a few ideas, I decided to take a journey down part of Edinburgh’s Royal Mile, the intention to examine how the city buildings themselves though they are ever present have pushed back into virtual Edgelands. I planned on doing this by journeying down the single street looking at the how the the yearly festival is changing the perception by visiting the changes in social structure, photographing how the changes made its effect on history and the value given to the landscape by visitors and locals alike.

Planning, preparation and attempt

While preparing for this; I made a short plan of the journey, the journey was to move from the top of the royal mile, just outside the castle esplanade, down to the Tron building which at one point was one of the main historical boundaries of the city.

Due to the ongoing degradation of sight in my left eye and now the presence of a vestigial cataract in my right eye, along with my mobility issues, it was decided that I should undertake the journey in a wheelchair, mainly due to the concerns of my partner that in such a busy location that I may be knocked over.

Reluctantly I undertook the journey in the wheelchair and it upon three main issues.

Edinburgh is not laid out for wheelchair users and they streets and paths are unpassable due to space or lack of maintenance to the path and road surfaces.
Quite simply during the festival, space is at a premium and locations to shoot images from a wheelchair level were limited.
What I was capturing swiftly became unsuitable for the assignment, mainly as the images captured had too many people in them. It became difficult to photograph the buildings for the people.

After examining the photos, I have decided that I would upload them and publish them to my learning log as it was an idea which ultimately failed as I made up my mind that the idea did not work.

Royal Mile Close – closed for business

Here a historical yard area called a close, has been sectioned off so that an outside entertainmeant area could be created.

Royal Mile Close – entertainment for some.

Here it can be seen that the original buildings have been ignored so that the small courtyard can be converted and sectioned off.

Unobserved Obscura

At the top of the Royal Mile sits the camera obscura which has been on this site since 1835. Many people walk passed it thinking that it is nothing more than the first gift shop in the shopping gauntlet which is the Royal Mile.

Towards the Cathedral

At the first main junction down the Royal Mile, you cross over the mound, and continue heading down the old town. In between the court buildings can be seen the gates to the performance area; a section of road closed to all traffic so that public performances can be made and shows can be touted or leafleted to the passing public.

The only smooth crossing.

Heading through the crowded junction, we cross the actual mound road. This is only one of two smooth crossings for wheelchair users in the whole of the street. Between people, poor road surface and barriers, the crossings become crowded and at the green crossing signal, it is everyone for themselves.

The Fringe Gate.

Here compressed between two anti terrorist gates, we squeeze further down the street. Here be performers, leaflets and buskers.

Chess Anyone?

A man sits dressed as a chess piece challenging passing tourists to a game of chess. Very few look up to see the buildings that surround them.

Church or Shop

The Cathedral is surrounded, all 4 sides have been given over to commerce and entertainment. Inside hang flags from many historical battles, outside is has been decorated with coloured plastic pigeons.

Overhead leafleting

As we passed the crowded pavement at the Cathedral, we passed a large number of people handing out leaflets for their shows at the fringe and festival. Every single person handed a leaflet over the top of my head to my partner. The journey had soured for me; having been bounced, bashed, sworn at, pushed aside and now ignored, I lost all focus and inspiration for the journey.

Last Stop

Here we stopped the journey, we were within site of the destination, the Tron church, but I was disheartened and depressed at the journey. What should have been fun turned sour at the lack of the milk of human kindness.

Conclusion

While the idea of a journey was being conveyed I felt that there was little to no landscape or cityscape available and that the part of the city I was journeying through were repeating themselves. While buildings could be seen to be passing, the perceived lack of interaction with the buildings of visitors could not be discerned due to the amount of people and the difficulty in obtaining clear and concise images.

I feel that the images did not gel and the concept was flawed in its design. I shall go back to the drawing board and work out what to do now.

Assignment 1. Beauty and the Sublime.

Interpreting the brief

The brief for this Assignment reminds you that it may feed into Assignment 6 at the end of the course. The brief here is open for some interpretation as it asks for between 6 and 12 images which convey from the photographers’ point of view, beauty and sublime.

The terms beauty and sublime have over the years had a number of definitions and the terms themselves have broadly lost their artistic values due to misuse and misinterpretation. One only has to look at the number of different uses and identities that Sublime has within the book ‘The Sublime’ to see how devalued the word has become.

I wanted to return to the ‘as near as the original’ definitions as possible for applying them to my interpretations on landscape photography

In this series of pictures, I settled on trying to capture some of the imbalance as described in Exercise 1.9. I wanted to see if I could get both sides of a social contrast within a single scene.

I wanted to capture the changes in Leith, which was a port town before being merged into the City of Edinburgh. The port of Leith was one of the industrial hearts of the city. The large ports and docks built, maintained and broke ships as well as handling cargo destined not only for the City but for locations to the north, south, east and west of the city. It was the first port of call for any immigrant to the area and provided many jobs on the docks and beyond for many residents. The area is now undergoing a large social change as buildings have been knocked down or repurposed for luxury housing, student housing, shops, malls, casinos and large-scale housing developments.

Visual Culture

Using landscape painting as a jumping off point for this assignment, I knew that I wanted to go to beyond the limitations of what I could see within the scene through the viewfinder. I felt that I could go outside the limitations of a 35mm frame by accepting that I could expand the visual canvas as the original landscape painters had done. With this in mind, I wanted at least a few of the scene to be stitched together from several images to provide a final image.

Images for Assignment 1.

Using my knowledge of the red filter for Black and White exposures, I wanted to get both the sky and the cityscape exposed properly together. After taking a light exposure reading, I set the camera to manual and chose the f-stop and the exposure speed which best suited the whole of the scene. After taking the images I then stitched the 7 exposures together in photoshop to produce the final scene.

East Dock Entrance.

Entering the broken gates of the port, the gatehouse, longshoremen housing and storehouses are gone. Expensive housing has been built and a casino sited at a loading point. The cargo cranes are abandoned, unmaintained and rotting, providing housing for wild pigeons and gulls. Further expansion is planned as dockland is cleared awaiting the return of developers.

Sitting behind an expansive mall is the Royal Yacht Britannia, it rests in a berthing area where ships would have unloaded grain. Now visitors can view the recovered land where large-scale houses rapidly rise on ground made up of broken buildings and dirt. They can view the rotting spine of a loaders platform as it dissolves into the sea and view the refueling of cable laying ships and mobile oil and gas exploration ships.

Britannia to rotting docks.

I stitched together 9 images to make this panorama. I wanted to capture the wide expanse of the area as well as the emptiness of it.

The central point of this image is around about the 500-foot mark of the original sea wall, meaning that originally I would have been 500 feet from real dry land. When it was built it was a berthing and rest area for local shipping. During a storm the entire dock area would fill with ships seeking protection from rough seas. The lighthouse would have been the beacon that many sailors would have been happy to see on a rough day

Lighthouse to recovered land.

The lighthouse now lies empty, graffiti covered, its rooms, platform and the area underneath, between the supporting columns is an area for underage drinking and drug use. Stretching off into the distance is what is left of the ports and dry docks. The large mall and parking structure sits behind the royal yacht and nearly everything to the right is reclaimed land. Developers have pushed down the buildings and are slowly turning the land over to luxury housing. Many of the houses at Platinum point are beyond the reach of many locals who cannot afford the £265,000 for a 2-bedroom apartment.

Platinum point pool.

Due to the worldwide collapse of markets, the development of the area has stopped while the developers build on a smaller scale in other parts of the area. This has left the planned plots to fill as lagoon sites and the plots have become a housing for wildlife. It is only a matter of time before this pond it taken back by concrete and steel and the wildlife pushed further away. In the meantime, this plot reminds the apartment owners that their houses are built on nothing more than temporary land and at some point, the sea will reclaim it.

Unused plot and road.

As already stated the developers have built amenities and infrastructure for houses which they have not yet built. Nature is trying to claim back the land, helped in part by residents who, having left, have dumped their patio plants onto the scrubland. These plants are beginning to take root and will potentially cause more problems in the future. Until then, the area is used by dog walkers, teen bike riders, and wanderers.

Behind the Gasworks.

The now unused gas tank dominates the skyline, it can be seen for miles. There used to be two such structures here before the first was taken down so that a small mall could be built as an amenities service for the local area. It is smaller areas like these that the developers have moved on to, throwing up student and luxury housing with the minimum of social housing within it. Until they start building the land lies unused, the skeletal remains of demolished buildings pointing out the last indications of local history.

Self-evaluation of the work

These images were not the ones that I originally planned for the assignment. I had planned on more Turneresque landscapes and it was only when I was in discussion with my Tutor prior to undertaking this Assignment that I changed direction and looked towards social politics through landscape.

I wanted to rekindle some of the social discourse that I had in my last course, to examine what changes are happening during the gentrification of an area I knew well, along with documenting the rapid loss of local history as buildings are torn down in the rush to build houses that no one can afford.

Having decided on very wide landscapes I had to make my mind up on how I wanted to do it. I knew that I could not regiment the number of exposures needed as I would have to overlap and get in camera all of the landscape that I needed in one set.

Having no car and having to rely on a driver I had to plan the route carefully so that I would get everything I wanted in one day, otherwise, it could be two or three weeks before they were available again [and this would have up my course timetable completion into doubt].

I was pleased with the plan and although it was a difficult day I feel that I achieved what I set out to do. While not all the landscapes stitched together I was able to fall back on some of the single images that I had taken which I felt also suited the series.

Contact Sheet.

Full contact sheet of images taken for this assignment.

Technical Choices

All of the images were taken either handheld or supported by a crutch used as an improved monopod. I decided to apply filters in post-production as I was interchanging lenses and the filters that I have do not go up to 62mm. I chose Black and White for most of the images as I felt that they best represented the mood of the image. In a couple of the images I also boosted the saturation to see what happened with the colours but in most cases, single bright objects overtook the scene and pulled the eye away.

Visual Outcomes

The framings for these images are a response to the framings from paintings I have seen as part of this course. I wanted to get the scale of each scene, in such a way that at times the viewer is overpowered by the scale and may feel some vertigo as the image slips under their feet.

Over the day I made a number of images and through careful selection finally settled on the six that represent my interpretation of beauty and the sublime. In three of the images, I pushed my experimental boundaries to obtain a challenging series of images, where I have tried to define and express my emotions within the scene.

I tried to get both beauty and sublime within the same frame. Those that present my interpretation of the sublime were executed in a similar vein but I tried to continue the visual series with contrasting light and shadow.

I feel that they also have an uncertainty as they diversify from the weather conditions in which they were taken.

Reflection on assessment criteria

Overall, I am happy with this first assignment even with the personal challenges I had before, during and after the shoot. So far the coursework has guided me and encouraged me to undertake research into an area that I have not been exposed to much so far. It has given me some more creative ideas and techniques which I hope to carry on into the rest of the course.

References

Anon, 2010. The Sublime. (s.n.).

Roberts, R., 2011. Edgelands. Michael Symmons Roberts, Paul Farley. (s.n.).

Leonard Scott Landscape

Learning Log of OCA Level 2 Photography Course – Landscape.

Tag Archives: Edinburgh

Exercise 3.2 – Postcard Views

References

Assignment 2 – Attempt 1 – The Journey

Concept

Planning, preparation and attempt

Conclusion