Edinburgh phoaties

[stuart]

Lately I have been gathering together some photos of edinburgh from the last year and putting them up on various forums and that, and I just felt like sharing them here too. If nothing else but to show that I've not just being sitting on my ass all the past year whining about how the forest banned me from working after 7 o'clock, or wouldn't let me ever try to out help with the sound engineering.

Last year I promised Cornelia I would send her some pictures I had taken of Edinburgh for her book, but I never got round to it, sorry Cornelia.. Anyway these are all taken after that pretty much, and I suppose it's for all the EVS staff from the forest who I remember and who were all lovely people.

Whether you are staying in Edinburgh or you have to leave now because of the forest closure, here are some photos I took, maybe of some places around Edinburgh you recognise, maybe of places you didn't know were there and never went to. Here is a picture of it, from me to you, with love.

I got more to come, but for starters here are a few photos I took in the Pentlands the other day.

--

Edit- Feckin arses of all arses!

I uploaded all these the other day on some forum and had problems with the width, so I re-uploaded them all 850 pixels wide!!!!!

can we change the max to 850 or 900, or else I'll have to upload them all again. I wanted to share my photo album of edinburgh with the forest

you can view them here in the meantime-

artstuvsseaton.imgur.com
greenbrainsurgery.imgur.com
artstuvsseaton.tumblr.com

OK I can be bothered resizing this one, which I present in various forms.

It's not tilted, if you look at the trees you can see they lean a bit to the right so it actually needs adjusted the other way i think. In the most squashed version you can really see the tilt of the land. This is of the Harlow Reservoir in the Pentlands, where all the water you have been drinking comes from.







That's pretty much the best one really, the closest I've come to a Colin Prior anyway, with my little Nikon coolpix sweatshop tesco camera.

[stuart]

OK I resized some of them to fit the 800 pixel limit.

This one shows the valley in the distance.



This is looking the other way towards Edinburgh with Arthur's Seat in the distance.

[stuart]

Took this one at the start of the year when it was snowing, it is taken from Craiglockhart hill a small peak just out of view to the left in the above photo. It shows The Pentland hills in the background.



Also this one is a full >360 panoramic taken during the selenelion winter solstice where the you can see both the sun and the eclipsed moon at the same time, only sadly not on this occasion because it clouded over... Still it was a good photo anyway, behind the clouds is a sun in perfect alignment with the earth and the moon. (21-12-2010)



This one is taken from Corstorphine Hill, two full moons ago with Craiglockhart Hill and the Pentlands in the background. The photo on the right is on the other side of that hill looking the other way before the sunset.



And this was taken in the basin of Arthur's Seat, a view from inside my space ship.

[stuart]

Another two I took earlier in the year during a full moon, the one on the left is a view from Corstorphine hill. The photo on the right is taken in Stenhouse. The pano software fucked it up slightly producing a double moon, but I liked the effect so I kept it that way, I think it takes on the form of an angel or something.

Brother wolf, sister moon

[stuart]

A few panoramics I made of Arthur's Seat during the snow, squished together a bit for effect.

[stuart]

Some views from Cramond Island.

[stuart]

And a few more I took the other day while I was in The Pentlands, experimenting with shadow.



I like the way the shadowy effect on the left of this one produced a kind of strange medieval looking face.

[stuart]

I like playing around with some of the photos I take to produced various effects. Actually it's not that difficult to put two symmetric photos together to produce an image of a face, or something else...

Anyway I liked this one. It is taken from one of the panoramics of Arthur's Seat covered in snow. I called it "All fur coat and no knickers"

For anyone who is not from around here that's an expression often used by Glaswegians to refer to people from Edinburgh.

[milk]

kinda reminds me of a mandelbulb.

[stuart]

That's not the only thing that's bulbous about it

[stuart]

I re-did the above one using better software for stitching photos and touched it up a bit more.



You can see a high res version on this tumblr page where I have started to upload photos.

http://greenbrainsurgery.tumblr.com/

[stuart]

Most of these are taken around Edinburgh in the past year or so, but not all. I'll just post them all anyway.

It's a concept I have been working on for some time now. Whenever I walk past an interesting door, or window, I take a photograph both looking in and looking out, and then put them together.

I don't know what it means. It doesn't mean anything really. I hope you can derive some meaning from it, if you do please share your thoughts.

[] In through the out door {}

(Album title courtesy of Led Zeppelin)

Presented in the order in which I took them, chronologically (I think). First three are taken around Dumfries, all the rest are Edinburgh.

[stuart]

These are photos of an old building in the Craiglockhart Dells, on the Water of Leith.



If you look closely you can see the image of a face in the window on the right-



This one is of an old abandoned building in Cammo Park in Edinburgh. A very nice place, and was apparently the inspiration for some of Robert Louis Stevenson's books.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cammo





And finally, I like to put them together sometimes like this for effect. I might upload a few more like this if I have the time. I like this one though because it kind of looks like the image of a bird or a serpent. It's kind of shamanic.

[stuart]

Three more.

Corstorphine Hill


Craiglockhart Dells


Looking in/out from the right of the above building^

[stuart]

Last one for today. Been at this for a solid 12 hours today and I need a beer. Might be a few more left to dig out after this.

This one is also from the Craiglockhart Dells.

[stuart]

I lied, this is the last one for today.

[stuart]

Think that's just about all the backlog of photos I took for this idea over the past year and a half, glad I finally got round to fixing them up. This is probably the last seven unless I take anymore. These aren't from Edinburgh, but they were taken in my home town of Sanquhar last year in june when I went home for a day for my gran's funeral. It's also a royal Burgh and it's got a castle so I thought I might as well throw them in. It's a bit dreich there but the weather happened to be spectacularly good that day so got some nice photos. I lived not far from this castle when I was a bairn.

To get in, I had to climb through a hole in a large fence that has been erected there because it's not safe anymore/local council health & safety bullshit/it's not been safe for >100 years..

Interesting Fact! All fences are made of less than 0.01% particle matter.

[stuart]

Redid this one a bit less heavy on the colour balance.

[stuart]

Took a load of 360deg panoramics of Arthur's Seat last year but couldn't get the software to stitch them up right. So I tried again using a combination of both Nikon's pano software + Double Take and after about 2 hours of trickery pokery + a little computer rage managed to produce this. Might try some more got a load of photos I can use, but it really chews up my CPU when I do this.



The Pentlands



Water of Leith

[Martin]

Just wanted to say this one is really good:

Now take 11 more like it and you can sell your own calendar!

[stuart]

Heh, it's an idea. Better get cracking though if I'm going to do that, I hear that all calendars will be coming to an end next year. Shouldn't need to create as large a panoramic for december..

[stuart]

Added a lot of to my In through the out door concept album recently from a few old derelict farmhouses in the area. Seems to work quite well with rotten old buildings. Hoping to add more in the coming months. If anyone knows of any old, disused, derelict buildings in the area let me know. Rather then embedding them all, as there is quite a lot, I'll just post the link to my G+ page. Scroll down for the latest additions.

https://plus.google.com/photos/10986339 ... 8919199281

https://plus.google.com/109863394112152727620/posts

Took a few from the Barnton Bunker up Corstorphine Hill the other day, don't know what that used to be but I think there have been a few illegal parties there in the past. Someone has apparently bought it and is working to convert the place into a nightclub and museum, if they can get the go ahead from the council. Might be worth going down there and having a word, could be a good space to host foresty events, seeing as it's also actually in a forest. They're hoping to have the place open by the end of the summer, but that might be a but optimistic.

[stuart]

Every week is voluntary arts week. So far anyway..

This is taken from a photo I took up Corstorphine Hill a few weeks ago, just before the weird early this is all your getting Scotland summer we had in march. It was really misty and a great opportunity to take pictures. All the animals in it are from photographs that I have taken over the past 12 years. The monkey is from the top of the Hanuman temple near Hampi in Karnataka in India.

Entropic Wilderness



You can view a higher res version of that here- I found this site (that is unfortunately affiliated heavily with facebook) but you can submit designs for competitions that some well known bands and stuff are holding, with some great prizes. unfiortunately it seems to be an exercise in vote touting but not all of them come down to a popularity vote and sometimes, if the people holding the competition like your design they often still want to offer you something and use it.

http://www.talenthouse.com/a59c64201108 ... 5e33429185

I used a photograph of the sun setting from somewhere out near the Harlaw Reservoir in the Pentlands. It was just an idea I had for it.



Also just kind of almost finished working on this, it's taken from a photo of a fairground ride in Nijmegen in Holland a couple of years ago.





I also took a load more photos for my In Through The Outdoor album theme which I have largely yet to work through and put together. You can view the latest ones here, I've taken loads from around Edinburgh lately. Hoping to expand on this further and maybe get out to some of the abandoned villages I've read about that you can find on the Great Highland way.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/1098 ... 8919199281

[stuart]

Any interesting doorways in the new building that I could take some pictures of before you forest them up?

I'm still working through some old ones but my In through the outdoor concept album is now into the 200s (or 400s if you include each door or window) I guess probably not, but that's ok because I've got tons of really good new ones from around the area this year anyway.

A few randomly chosen ones to illustrate the principle.





















Rest is here.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/1098 ... 8919199281

Like it or loath it, I couldn't give a toss either way.

[stuart]

Cramond Island ones turned out alright, might want to retake them in a better light ie. cloud cover, easier to colour sat and brightness match then + lends itself to more dereliction









Another 250 here

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/1098 ... 8919199281

[stuart]

Took this pano up Bonaly today. Spent all night stitching it and iWarping it so you better look at it.



Oh eh and this one from a couple of weeks ago of the jet stream probably looking the other way from Corstorphine Hill.

[stuart]

Best wishes to all at the forest for the new age of spiritual enlightenment.

I took this on Xmas morning looking down the Nith valley from near where I grew up, a nice opportunity to take some photos of the mist. I turned it into a spoof album cover for the comedy folk duo played by Vic and Bob (that's Reeves and Mortimer for all students under 25 reading this. look it up on your blackberry)

This thread is too many pictures I have to wait long time to load for I can reply.

I hope everything is going well and the forest is evolving into something new and interesting. I have yet to darken your doors again but will soon I hope one night out of the blue.

[stuart]

I just sold my 1st art. All for charity of course. Now that the secret is out...

http://secret-7.com/

I'm #404 pg8, bottom right, or this



The money raised was donated to--->

http://www.artagainstknives.com/

This was the 2nd charity event run by The Secret 7, in which 7 musicians/bands present 100 7" singles of one their songs, each with a unique sleeve design. I was one of the 280 chosen via the Talenthouse invite-

http://www.talenthouse.com/greenbrainsurgery -

The rest of the 700 in total were created by a selection of well known designers and artists from across the world, including Gilbert & George and the Chinese artists/political activist Ai Weiwei.

My one was chosen for The Laura Marling single The Beast. It's comprised of 4 different photographs. The backdrop is from a photo of the edge of a frozen pond in winter on a golf course in Dumfries, with the colour inverted. I thought the patterns in the ice created an interesting wintery sky effect (2009). The body of 'the beast' is from a photo of a monkey I took in India (Hanuman Temple, Hampi, 2002) and the head of the beast is a cut out of a photo of a sheep's skull I found lying around the Pentland Hills in 2011 (+ I also took the photo of the moon).

The exhibition was last weekend and yesterday for Record Store Day where they were sold for £40 each. No-one knew who the designer was, or which single they were buying, which featured songs from Laura Marling, Nick Drake, Elton John, Public Enemy, Nas, Haim and Jessie Ware.

They were queuing up outside for this and the first 500 or so went in the first hour. The remaining 25 are being auctioned on ebay

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/artagainstkni ... 7675.l2562

I still haven't seen a good photo of the sleeve, it looked a bit bland in some of the ones that came up on facebook. I'm sure it printed fine though. This is the first time I've ever had anything even printed using a proper printing device. I prefer this one, but went for the dark one as I thought it would be more likely to get chosen.

[stuart]

p.s. New Stuff. I can haz HDR phoaties noo.