Leith is Another Country

At least that's how it felt today when I made a trip down there to visit my Polish friend A. On the bus on the way there the mother and child sitting behind me were chatting away in Polish. I looked out of the window as we headed down Leith Walk, and next door to the pub, where men with green and white scarves were standing smoking (before heading off to the cup-tie at Easter Road). there was another new shop specialising in Polish food with a massive red-and-white Polish flag in the window. There are lots of Polish shops now on Leith Walk, and although I didn't go in today, even the Leith Tescos have several shelves devoted to Polish products. So it's not just the fact that I was visiting A, who shares a flat with her sister and another Polish woman, and has another Polish friend temporarily staying with them while he looks for a flat, that made it feel a little like a foreign country! A is another photographer from my course and she too has not been taking as many pictures as she would like since we graduated. But now she has got some second-hand studio lights and a bit of a 'home studio' set-up and is re-igniting her passion for photography. We talked about lighting and radio-triggers and other photographic things. And about plans for photography and writing and the need to get day-jobs, and about what has been happening at our old college, since A recently took pictures of a current student who also does some modelling, on the other side of the lens. There has been a bit of change in personnel there, with some lecturers leaving apparently, as well as a new head of department. We didn't have time to use the lights for a portrait session, but as I still needed a blip for today, I took the view from the balcony of her flat. Another late afternoon image to add to my recent sequence of similar images. Catching the bus up Leith Walk the young woman behind me was deep in conversation on her phone - talking Polish, of course.
Czesc.