Edinburgh.

This is as good an image to start with as any, it tells you so much about this city, which is good because there is so much that I feel I cannot tell you about it. Things that slip between the gaps that a series of two dimensional images has. I didn't know what to expect from Edinburgh. It was a city only peripherally on my radar and I ended up in it mostly by random chance.

Back in April and May of this past year (yes I have been sitting on these images for that long) I took my mom on a trip to England and Scotland. Mostly Scotland as our family has Scottish ancestry and she wanted to see the country and look up information on our clan. The only real destination we had in mind was Perth. Edinburgh competed with Glasgow in terms of being the biggest and most likely cities to fly in to. So we sort of settled on Edinburgh with all the certainty of a 50/50 coin flip. As it was, we flew into London and took the train north to Edinburgh, so it wasn't until I stepped off the train in Waverly station that I got my first hint of what an amazing city it is.

How to describe it though? Edinburgh is a city of contrasts. It is old. So old. The stones are stained with age, and much of the inner city looks as it must have 300 years ago. It is a dark and brooding city. The sky here seems to hang lower and one gets the feeling that Edinburgh is perched at the frontier of the known world. But it is also a city where parks open up between buildings and are full of color. Where the people party on Friday nights til 4 in the morning, sometimes reveling in costumes. It is also a city of secrets, kept hidden in the hundreds of narrow, winding closes that run between and under the densely packed buildings.

I was instantly captivated, and that sense of cautious wonder didn't abate at all during the four days I spent there.

Tags:   Edinburgh Scotland UK travel Hasselblad Hasselblad 500C Arthur's Seat Salisbury Crags old dusk twilight color film Europe cold It was so bitterly cold up on the crags this evening city urban edge of the world Blue Moon Camera

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I came back from the UK with about 30 rolls of medium format film (about 300 total images). I then proceeded to develop and print everything. With that batch of prints in hand, I spent more than a couple of evenings sitting and flipping through the collected images, getting a feel for what I had gravitated toward while in Edinburgh. I was looking for patterns after-the-fact that I had not consciously noticed during-the-fact. The actual scanning of negatives didn't start until I had been back in the states for about four months. And that process took another two months to complete. Of those original 300 prints, about half of the images were selected for the extra work of scanning and processing. Of those 150 scans, about 90 turned out to be Edinburgh, a dozen or so of Perth and the balance of London. All the time since has been spent editing scans and trying to decide how to present the finished images.

Those of you who follow my stream may remember my series from Paris. I showed it here as one continuous batch of images. I did that because I wanted to experience of seeing the images to be immersive. I don't really care much for going on trips, coming home and showing the images scattered one or two here or there. It reduces the presentation to a collection of nice images, and loses the ability to build a narrative. And a two dimensional print is limited as it is in its ability to show the experience of standing in Paris, or Edinburgh for that matter. I like stringing the images together because I want to communicate more with the series than I can if I just show my favorite, then a couple of beach pinholes, then my next favorite Edinburgh image, then hop over to downtown Portland photos. You get my drift.

One thing I am going to do different is I am going to take an intermission between Edinburgh and London and Perth. Two and half months of Paris, or however long it was, tried even my patience.

And so on to Edinburgh. I have divided the images up into three sub-series. Edinburgh: Dark, Edinburgh: Light and well, Edinburgh: Everything Else. I want to work with the contrasting themes of how dark and grim a city Edinburgh could be but also show the pockets of color and lightness that could be found here and there. We'll see how it goes.

This one is from along the Royal Mile and made with the assistance of my Holga camera. More on the Mile to come.

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Edinburgh is old. There is no getting around it. Nor does it even try to. But it doesn't flaunt it either. Edinburgh wears its age like a comfortable, but well broken in old coat. And you see signs of it most everywhere you go in the city. I really like that about this city.

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If time-worn steps are not proof enough for you, the kirkyards that dot the city offer ample evidence of age, where the tombstones are as likely to date to the 17th century as they are the 19th. I am also somewhat convinced that Edinburgh has more kirkyards than parks. Then again, in a city that has had as much time to accumulate the dead as Edinburgh has, you would need numerous places for them to congregate. Most of the kirkyards are gated up come twilight, but someone had left this one open, so I stepped in a moment, not planning on staying long.

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I am fairly certain that the soul of Edinburgh is hidden somewhere within its maze of closes. The city is riddled with these narrow alleys, at their largest just big enough to drive a car down, at their more common narrowest just wide enough for one person to slip between the worn stone walls. Sometimes the closes are hard to spot, their entrance looking like nothing more than a short dead-end alley, until you get to the end and see it is really a blind corner, and with another twist and turn or two you find yourself in a hidden plaza or coming out on a street two blocks away. One can get lost in these closes, wandering for hours. And all of them have stories to tell, some with rather dark endings to them.

I am starting us off on one of the wider entrances, but things are going to get cramped (and darker) awfully fast. Don't worry, I spent a lot of time wandering these paths and made it out once. I am moderately confident in being able to do it again. Just stay close and follow my lead.

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