Edinburgh

Edinburgh in winter; long shadows, low sun and short days. Bright lights, Christmas markets and fairground lights make the cold nights a little nicer. 

I spent Friday roaming around the city, mostly with the intention of taking photos, drinking coffee and soaking in some of the atmosphere. It's been a while since I have spent a full day in Edinburgh and I was a bit surprised at how excited I was to step off the train at Waverley. Needless to say I had to make the pilgrimage to the Apple Store first, at the top of Waverley Steps.

You can pretty much trace out my day from the images below, started off by walking to Stockbridge to (finally) take some shots of Circus Lane, walked up to Calton Hill, then up to the university area and finally the South side of North Bridge to shoot the Christmas market and the fairground rides. At which point my camera battery died. 

I took some other shots that didn't turn out as well as was hoped, hence why they aren't posted, but I'll go back for them before they turn off the lights of the winter festivities. 

Teviot Row and McEwan Hall

2017 Part 1

I thought it would be a good idea to flick through the photographs that I had been taking through 2017 as this year is drawing to a close. I have selected one of my favourite photographs from each month with a small description of where it came from. Most of them will also be found in my instagram feed.

 

Jens in Mourning.

 It was taken at the Glasgow Necropolis. It was one of the first (of many) instameets that I went on this year. This was the first time that I had been to Glasgow to take photographs, it was a very long day and I think I came back with over 300 photographs, but this was my favourite. It's a bit dark, but then it was a cemetery. The person in it is Jens @jensinscotland. 

 

 

But Why?

February saw a number of friends meeting up in Edinburgh, all instagrammers of course. Although we started up in the town centre we ended up in Leith. I caught this shot of @alycoste and @davidgulliver_photography at Newhaven Harbour. The way I caught Alayne's hand made me think she was asking for an explanation from David. I didn't really notice this until the day after. Amusingly the first two photographs from the year actually had people in the shots which usually isn't my style.

 

The Cloisters.

Another visit to Glasgow in March, this time with @davidgulliver_photography  and @ashcharlton. There were a number of shots that I liked from this trip, especially the light trails from Charing Cross, but ultimately this was my favourite from the cloisters at Glasgow University. It took a while to get the photograph without any people in it. So many shots are about patience more than anything else.

 

The Working Palace

The first of my many trips to my second home this year allowed me to take a lot of photographs of places that I hadn't shot since 2013. This is the Noordeinde Palace in The Hague, also know as the working palace. See the comment above about patience... I live close to this palace and it has various ceremonies each year which can be nice to watch. Noordeinde is also my favourite street in The Hague, so much to see and do.

Socks

Stance

Something for all those that have teased me about buying expensive Stance socks for the past couple of years, said so well by The Brooks Review:

"Shitty socks are fucking annoying. Spend $30 on a pair, and your socks will go from being annoying to being something you love, because $30 merino wool socks are magic."

It also worth reading the rest of the article. Needless to say my last visit to The Hague involved selecting several pairs of Stance socks.

December

I'll start by explaining the photograph, it is the entrance to the harbour (haven in Dutch) at Scheveningen, The Hague. It has taken me what can only be described as a ridiculous amount of time to learn Port (left)  and Starboard (right). Even now I laugh at myself about how very simple things can trip me up. As a geographer probably the most embarrassing thing to admit is that I still sometimes use NESW (never eat shredded wheat) when I think about east and west. 

So back to the point of this post, apart from the pretty photo of a storm brewing.

All my living in the moment went straight out the window when I realised that December is here and good lord where the hell did the rest of the year go? No seriously, where the hell did the rest of the year go? I have stuff to finish and do, December is not a productive month. To many mince pies to eat and sweet tea to drink. :-)

I reflect once again on achievements made over the year, the new people I have met, reconnecting with those that I had lost touch with and personal achievements that I feel good about. It's easy to look and find the things that I feel good about, so I have been trying to deconstruct the parts of the year that I don't feel good about or that went wrong.

I was once taught to remove my emotions from criticism and to try to look at criticism objectively and rationally. It's amazing how useful this has been throughout my life. It has allowed me to think about any problems or criticism and not react "all guns blazing". It has provided a useful technique in thinking about what I could have done better and how this could have been achieved and can be avoided in the future.

In every December I look forward to the winter solstice. I have always felt that this is a much more significant day in the calendar than any other, the general thought of our planet spinning through a vast universe in almost perfect balance makes me laugh at how insignificant we are. So spare some time on the 21st December at 16:28 for the point where the day starts getting longer again.

Thanks for reading!

The Hague

I travelled back to The Hague last week to take care of some administration and to catch up with friends. It's getting harder to meet with friends there of late primarily because they keep leaving to pastures new.

The city is changing, every time I visit I notice these changes, cafes disappearing, new shops appearing and of course new tram routes just to confuse me. It makes me wonder how much changed during the time I lived there that I didn't notice. Change, it seems to me, is more evident when you don't look for a period of time.

I had a lot of time to think while walking around the city (roughly 16km each day I was there) and I was able to bring my attention to the present instead of rooting around in my mind at things I have experienced in the past in The Hague. It was nice to be there and to have a still mind.

I still love this city. It almost defies explanation. I feel so comfortable there. There is no single thing that I can say that makes it such a great place for me, but when it is all combined there is no place I would rather be. Perhaps, I just haven't travelled enough. Of course, there is always a difference between travelling to new locations and living in new locations.

I didn't get much time to take photographs but these are the ones that I like when I did manage to get time. These photographs are from Scheveningen, a modern seaside resort with a long, sandy beach, an esplanade, a pier, and a lighthouse. Click on them for the full size if your on a desktop or tablet. Oh, the photograph of the fishing vessel, I have almost this exact shot from 2013. I think I like the shot below more as you can see the industry of Rotterdam in the background.

So much change, yet so much the same.