Leo and Peter working the angles at the Forth Rail Bridge on Friday evening, as the rain began to fall.
I think the early winter afternoons proved to be very successful, as the light changed quickly and sometimes dramatically. We had quite a variety of light, from spectacular to flat, intense and contrasty to black night, and we even had a dusk squall and downpour to run away from to give us the total immersion experience.
We didn't have too much opportunity to have a good look at all of your pictures, which is a downside to location courses. You're still welcome to send me some examples and I'll try to get back to you with some feedback.
We can only scrape the surface on these courses, and really, if you want to progress and to sustain your enthusiasm it helps to join groups of photographers for excursions and discussions over a long period.
The Stills Democratic Camera Club is ideal, but it is taking a 6 month sabbatical.
http://scottish-photographers.com/ is an organisation of 'independent-minded' photographers who see photography as a form of expression as well as art, and look a bit further than pictorial beauty when making photographs. They run portfolio sessions, organised by David - davidbphoto@yahoo.co.uk
http://www.lensculture.com/ - for inspiration, is an online contemporary photography magazine.

http://www.edinburghphotographicsociety.co.uk - is the camera club for the city, with competitions, talks and a busy calendar of activities.
http://www.onlandscape.co.uk/ - for inspiration is an online magazine focussed on landscape photography, usually in a traditional pictorial style. Lots of good technical detail too, if you like that sort of thing (which I do.)
http://www.meetup.com/The-Edinburgh-Digital-Photography-Meetup-Group/ is an informal group of digital photographers who organise meetings and shooting excursions in and around Edinburgh.
It's been a pleasure working with you over the past few weeks.
Feel free to drop me a line if I can help with anything.

Keith

30.11.12 South Queensferry

For the final afternoon we can visit South Queensferry, meeting at the car parking opposite the Hawes Inn. Right under the bridge.
I'll meet Leo, Peter and Sharon at Stills at 1.30 and then we'll make our way to South Queensferry as soon as we can.
We have a nice high pressure weather system on us, which usually brings settled weather, and cold temperatures. As it gets darker, the bridge will light up and make a good colour contrast between the warm tungsten light on the red bridge, and the blue of the sky. We may even have some high alto-cirrus cloud for added attraction.
The main decision of the day is likely to be where to photograph the bridge from (assuming that's what we want to do.) This will depend to a great extent, on how wide your lenses are. With a very wide lens you can be close to the bridge, and the distorting effect of the lens can introduce some dramatic spatial effects, as well as allowing you to include all of the bridge and some sky and water too.
With less wide lenses, you would need to be further away, and achieve images that have a similar perspective to our own vision. 

Also we need to consider whether to be looking west or east - it seems a simple enough choice, but it can be very committing.

You might think that the bridge has been photographed once or twice before, and you would be right. But that's no reason not to give it a go. Richard Misrach lives in a house that overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge in California, and photographed it over the course of a year from exactly the same spot. The results are so varied, that when I looked through the book the first time, I didn't realise that it was the same view! Maybe that says something about me though.

Prints

A quick note - David has said he'll bring some prints from the shoots of the past few weeks to have a chat about.
If anyone else would like to do this too, please bring them along - inkjet a or speedy Jessops prints would be fine if time is short.
I'll bring a few prints that I've just made too, although they aren't from this course.
We can have a coffee or something similar in the Hawes Inn to finish - it's a tradition.

Harris

A Guardian audio slideshow with photographs by Murdo McLeod, about Harris tweed.

Here's the link:
 http://gu.com/p/363a2

 http://gu.com/p/363a2 

Friday Nov 23

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Access to the Broxburn Bings is from the industrial estate, the 1st right junction after the roundabout as you enter Broxburn East Main Street (the A89).
I will meet Leo at Stills at 1pm, and then pick up Sharon at work around 1.30pm and hope to get to Broxburn for 2pm (traffic permitting.)
Peter, do you want a lift from Stills?
Sylvana - I think you were going to contact David. If you haven't managed, you may have the wrong number. Contact me for the number - kbrame@blueyonder.co.uk.

The bings are a west lothian phenomenon - the mountainous waste and spoil from the oil shale industry, creating a unique and unusual mini-mountain range, now being colonised by wild flowers and young motorbike scramblers. It's a slightly surreal and in parts steep landscape that lends itself to the style of photography that has been called 'industrial picturesque.'
Josef Koudelka's epic, ominous and slightly disturbing pictures of the forgotten and abused back corners of industrial Europe are a fine example.
Also worth looking at are Richard Misrach's huge photographs of the 'man-mauled' landscapes of american deserts, weapons testing sites and industrial flotsam and jetsam. His early series of pictures of deserts at night, with lit-up cactus could be useful viewing. Judging by the video the book reads itself, so worth £225 just for that.

The bings are accessed by crossing the canal by a bridge, then walking through some birch wood and scrub for a few minutes, then into the bings themselves. Some areas are steep, but these can be avoided if you're not comfortable with it.
It will get dark, and if you have torches, please bring them, as it is a bit rough underfoot, with no street lights. And steep, did I mention steep?
The glow from the town and the evening sky can register in the pictures if the exposure is long enough. There are also wind-blown hawthorn bushes dotted over the bings. We could try doing some long exposure pictures, and light up the bushes with flash or torches - a bit experimental. So tripods if you have them, torches, flash gun too. I have various spare bits and bobs and I'm sure we can cobble something together.
If we're trying this we need to decide on a suitable spot that we can get out of in the dark...
I'd wrap up warm too. Weather looks ok at the moment.

Josef Koudelka - Magnum. Region of the Black Triangle (Ore Mountains.)

Friday November 16

We could meet in Newhaven tomorrow. There's a parking area just by the Harbour Inn, Fishmarket Square, off Newhaven Main Street. See the map at the bottom of the screen.
There are contrasting environments to explore. Newhaven village itself is an old picturesque village, with a harbour and coastal views west along the Forth and across to Fife. It has its own historical photographic associations with Hill and Adamson. There is also a modern housing development along Wester Harbour, which people seem to either love or hate. It's a waterfront development that I thinks is a bit exclusive, and modern, with clean lines and enclosed courtyards.
The city, its architecture and inhabitants' relationship with the built environment is a rich source of photographic inspiration, which doesn't depend on the subject being conventionally scenic.
Horst Hamann has a fine series of pictures of cities, often using a 'vertical panoramic' format.

http://www.horsthamann.com/

Rene Burri engaged in a long-term photographic study of the work of Le Corbusier,





Raymond Depardon, also from Magnum, seemed to have a recurring interest in such apparently unphotogenic subjects as car parks, roads and the infrastructure of motor vehicles.

Raymond Depardon, Magnum Photos

Bernice Abbott created an iconic portrait of New York, in a modernist celebration of a buzzing metropolis.

Bernice Abbott

Many of these pictures are taken in a spirit of celebration, which is a good motivation for shooting, and photography into the 30s was often a celebratory exploration of the physical world and the unique qualities of the photographic process. In fact one later photographer actually said, "I photograph the world to see what the world looks like, photographed." The implication being that the world and the photograph are slightly different.
In the 60s and 70s, in reaction to photographic grandeur and visual drama, many photographers took to exploring the less majestic parts of the city, and also the things that get in the way. Lee Friedlander for example, made a consistent study of the signs, lamp posts, and general visual clutter of a modern city, often shooting in apparently random street corners and junctions of streets. 
So a defining characteristic of landscape photography is the domination of a pictorial style, related to and developing from Romantic painting, whereby the photographer tries to show a landscape at its most dramatic, magnificent and intense; and often being tempted to help reality along in the process by adding a different sky or other elements. The photographers I've mentioned here are presenting a different point of view, less lyrical, less obviously pictorial and in Friedlander's case, he is going in completely the opposite direction. Whatever the rules of the picturesque may be (and there have been rules), Friedlander did the opposite. Gleefully.

Lee Friedlander

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Walk Highlands

A couple of people have mentioned visiting the rest of the country for photographic trips.
An excellent online resource is Walkhighlands:
http://www.walkhighlands.co.uk/fortwilliam/coire-ardair.shtml

Walkhighlands website

It has low and high altitude route descriptions, with short and longer, more strenuous excursions. Maps too, and readers submit their own experiences and photographs. I don't work for Walkhighlands, in case you wondered!
The link takes you to Coire Ardair, near Loch Laggan. 
The big panoramic photograph (click on it, if it isn't displaying at full size), was taken at the high lochan  below the summit cliffs on Sunday. A magnificent place, very wild and hidden away, but surprisingly easy to get to, with no navigation worries. It takes a couple of hours to walk there, on a good path.

A panoramic stitch shot, of Creag Meagaidh in unfriendly weather