...tungsten, tin and sodium...

If I'd had any Blipcards on me I might have given this bloke one. Out of about twelve people taking pictures of Princes Street's various illuminated things from North Bridge he was one of only three who 1: was resting his camera on a steady surface in order to use a longer exposure and 2: had turned off his flash. I accept that there may be some cameras somewhere where the flash cannot be turned off if the camera deems it insufficiently bright and doesn't have any form of non-flash mode but they must be few and far between. You'd think people would look at the pictures they've taken in similar situations (dark, subject more than three metres away) and realise that the flash had zero effect except to over-expose whatever was in the foreground (such as the bridge parapet). It's not even as if any of them were photographing a person on the bridge with the Blamoral, wheel, helter-skelter and Scott Monument as a backdrop. BAGH. I see these people on the Castle and Calton Hill from my workdesk too; little pinpoints of light winking from both, more commonly after dark in winter but it is not unknown to see them during broad daylight from the people leaning over the west wall of the top bit of the castle taking pictures of the city.

On the subject of photographic crimes I was in a Post Office the other day and noticed the Scotsman's 2008 calendar featuring views of Edinburgh or possibly all of Scotland. On the front is what looked like it wanted to be a standard night-time view of the Balmoral from the north-east but which just looks completely wrong: the hotel base and top of the tower are sodium-lit whilst the stem or shaft of the tower is usually that nice bluey-greeny colour. It appears that someone has white-balanced the picture using the bluey-greeny-ness as their neutral colour. It hasn't really worked; the orangey bits are still orangey (as NOTHING gets rid of the narrowband sodium-orange except conversion to B&W) but the formerly greenish bits are a sort of hideous zombie-grey colour which fades unnaturally into the orange above and below. How anyone failed to notice this through the editing, selection, prepress and printing processes amazes me. Maybe the rest of the pictures inside are quite nice but I haven't looked yet.