At Last

Normally she  will stand and pull faces and asked to be photographed.
On this occasion, it was an imposition and an unnecessary delay.
She had to get to school!..........
It was he first day and she was itching to get there.
She had been up at the back of 4am looking to see if it was time apparently.
Like her mother on her first day, she would have been quite happy to make her own way there and didn't need grown-ups to 'help'.
She was ready!

After Squirrel had actually got to school, met all her pals and managed to escape the grown-ups, I made my way up to meet Casters, Mr Grumpy and The Lens Killer before getting the train into town for a day of picture taking at the Festival.

I set the cameras (one being the infrared one) to black & white and I wanted to do a day project in that and using the contrast produced by the SUN! (yes .... it was sunny .... Whooppee).
There were some shots that were just crying out for colour though.
(It wasn't just the heels and platforms that were high - the bloke wearing them was over 6' in his stocking soles).

The center of town was actually remarkably quiet and we were able to move around fairly freely and amazingly never lost each other even though we would frequently walk apart to get our own take on the day.

I tried for ages to get a clear shot of the girl smoking while in conversation with the bloke. It was more the amount of smoke that she was producing and the light that I was after.
I hope he was smoker!
She certainly was very polite about it.

I late lunch in the pub gave the opertunity to revue pictures ...... and have a laugh with the Polish waitress (who took pictures of us all with Casters' camera ... not seen them yet) - before supping up and heading back into the fray.

Getting a shot of Faith Grossnicklaus was a real challenge - not just because she was sitting in a really dark corner with really bright sun cutting across her - but because she had hundreds of people streaming past her on the steps the whole time.
But she was great - she played and posed for us and didn't seem that bothered that nobody was stopping to listen or put money n her fiddle case. I did and promised her I will send her the pictures when they are processed.

I spent some time talking to the owner of the ice-cream kiosk in The Grassmarket and how it has changed since I worked in it as a police box.
I can't believe that the water board wanted to charge her £35,000  to reconnect the water!.

As the day wore on we wandered down the High Street and round to Dynamic Earth where we met up with SWMBO and went in to watch the Pink Floyd show (again for SWMBO and I) before heading for home.

All in all - a very good day.

And just to prove that it wasn't all high contract and low key shots ........ there is this