Friday Nov2

The Met Office pressure chart shows an occluded front passing over us. It might give us a bit of rain, clearing as the front moves away. So from a photographer's point of view, the light may be a little soft, not very bright and colourful, but with some cloud texture and detail. There may be brighter periods too. 
In this type of light, I would consider working in black-and-white to emhasise tonality - the shades of black, white, grey - even silver. I would also concentrate on the composition and design of the pictures. If you have strong design, and a sensitivity to tone, it is often possible to create strong photographs even in poor light. 

Poor light, but geometric composition and paying attention to the
 pleasures of tonality made an interesting picture possible.

The location will be Arthur's Seat - the mountain in the city. We can meet at Stills, then wander down the Mile, past the Parliament and access Arthur's Seat by the Radical Road. This will give us options (and views), so we can choose to go onto the Salisbury Crags or the lower route by Hunter's Bog. 
It will probably be cold, wet, maybe a bit windy and rough underfoot. A snack would be handy. Dress warm!
Walkhighlands gives some helpful information about Arthur's Seat, including pictures and maps.
It is a volcano, with dramatic crags falling steeply to the city. A volcano! In a city centre! This is pretty dramatic, and so does lend itself to a visually dramatic photographic treatment. A very popular and persistent approach to landscape photography is to attempt to convey the location at its most intense and most visually compelling form. This is achieved by shooting when the light is oblique and clear, usually dawn or dusk, at a carefully chosen vantage point. Photographic techniques are chosen to enhance and accentuate elements such as cloud detail, perspective effects and scale. 
Photographers working in this style tend to use graduate filters, polarising filters, wide-angle lenses, red filters in black-and-white to darken blue skies, tripods to allow the use of small apertures to exaggerate deep depth-of-field effects, slow shutter speeds to exaggerate the flow of water.
Every technique serves to enhance, accentuate and to convey perfection, and many photographers feel that they are conveying the 'essence' of a location or environment. The photographer is very conscious of the visual effects of space, light, scale, visual contrasts, perspective and viewpoint.
For many, this is the default way to do landscape photography, and there are often well-known locations and viewpoints that you can visit.

Lindsay Robertson's picture at Arthur's Seat is consciously
 influenced by Ansel Adams and is a masterclass of dramatic tonality,
space, perspective and scale. Red filters enhance the cloud and sky.

When we work in this manner, we are following in the footsteps of people like Ansel Adams. Good examples of this are Lindsay Robertson, Craig McMaster, Lee Frost, Charlie Waite, Richard Childs, Joe Cornish, Colin Prior.
It can be a pleasant way to spend your time, to visit a well-known photographic viewpoint and to recreate your own versions of the famous views.

March 2. Arthur's Seat

So the plan for Friday is to have a visit to Arthur's Seat. I would like to pay more than one visit to Arthur's Seat, if you are willing, because it is a rewarding and varied area to photograph.
Conditions -according to the weather charts,  the high pressure sitting over our Scandinavian friends' western seaboard is sort of holding back the low pressure and the weather fronts - the wavy red or blue lines sitting west of Britain. There is a warm weather front in the north sea. So what this means for us is the weather should be fairly settled, maybe a bit breezy, good visibility but probably some cloud cover. The light then, will be diffused because of the clouds, and soft. Quite different from last Friday, when it was very contrasty, or hard. The soft light is likely to give rise to quite muted, gentle colour and in fact may lend itself to black-and-white photography.

The idea - to avoid simply going for a random wander with a camera we should try to have an idea for what to look for and to explore visually. It is very striking to have a mountain - a volcano! - in the middle of a civilised city. It is a stark contrast, and photographers do enjoy just such a contrast - a juxtaposition they sometimes call it; or an edge line. So let's try to explore the edge line between the civilised city, and the wild volcano. (Let's not fall over the edge.)

Salisbury Crags and Edinburgh from Arthur's Seat. Picture by me.

I would also like to concentrate on some shooting technique. Shooting should consist of three distinct decisions - focus, expose, frame. That is: 1 - decide exactly what to focus on, then lock the focus, 2 - decide exactly what to take a light reading/exposure from and lock the exposure, 3 - frame and compose the picture. Each of these decisions can have a huge impact on the resulting image. So if you don't know how to use your camera to lock the exposure, and lock the focus, try to have a look at the manual. Failing that we can try to work it out on Friday...
The route we'll take is quickly through town and Dumbiedykes, then up on to the Radical Road and on to the top of the Crags. If there's time we can extend this and go on to the top. Plenty of places to explore.
David Springford sells prints of photographs of Edinburgh, including Arthur's Seat, and this one shows lovely awareness of tone and light, as well as movement.
He has clearly given careful thought to the point that he focusses the lens at - notice how parts of the image are pleasantly soft, while the mountain is sharp; and he is leading the viewer's eye on a pleasant journey through the varieties of light, tone and texture. Working in black-and-white does encourage you to think out about the real fundamentals of tone, design, texture and so on.

Picture by David Springford - http://www.infinityphotos.co.uk/