Cathlyn and Stephen Visit

We have had a pretty blustery summer this year. I mean in Edinburgh you can almost count on there being a little bit of rain each day, but, usually by now we have had some proper good weather. And normally when I have people visiting it is good weather. At least it wasn't terrible for the day we decided to climb Arthur's Seat, and even though the wind was super strong, it probably kept me from sweating bucketloads. So by this point Cathlyn and Stephen had been in Edinburgh for about a week and a half. And with the weather looking a little bit up what better time to climb the hill (Mountain).

I haven't climbed this guy for about five years, I know I have gone part ways up for Bonfire Night a few years ago but have ony properly gone up to the summit once, and that was with my dad just before Dixon and I got married. I believe I am in better shape this time for the climb though we did take it a bit easier and avoided almost all of the goat paths. It was a beautiful climb, and Edinburgh looked gorgeous up there with wildflowers and wild life to spot. We saw a small bird of prey hunting up there and managed to get a few shots of it while it was stationary in the air looking for prey. I think it was a Kestral but I could be wrong, google didn't help too much when I was looking for birds of prey within Edinburgh. 

Climbing Arthurs Seat might need to be on my to do list more often than once every 5 years, but it was great to do it again, so without further ado, the pictures.

 

 

 

We also went to the zoo, so I should have some pictures of that soon too, I took some on film as well but we will have to see when we are going to get those developed, I forgot to put my SD card in my digital so the next post will probably be iPhone pictures, so hopefully I got a few good ones.

The Camera and The Gallery

 Sorry for the brief hiatus, I should really stop apologizing, we all know I am not very consistent at this blogging thing.

Anyway, where were we... well Caryn and Jackson took the day to do a day trip on a distillery and mini highland tour, round Glengoyne and Stirling Castle, it looked like they had a pretty excellent time together. Its a tour my dad and I had done before, at least four years ago. They did that while Dixon and I had the day to just chill out together. So the next day they had break while both of us were working. That catches us up to the Tuesday where we did the Camera Obscura and the World of Illusions and then we made our way over to the National Gallery where they were having a free Generation exhibit of 20 years of contemporary art throughout Scotland.

The camera obsura was very cool, as I hadn't ever seen that before even though I have been to the actual attration before, we came too late and didn't get to see that but got to go through all of the floors of illusions. It was a lot of fun all round.

And at the gallery as you might be able to suss out there was a particular exhibit that I really liked. It was all pretty cool though.

 

 

 

Holga 2; Edinburgh Zoo

I think I am getting the hang of this! Caryn was just here  so that meant that I get to go to the zoo! Which also meant great opportunity to take some more photos with my Holga and see if I can't figure it out some more! Unfortunately I had a slight disaster and the back fell off my camera and I think I lost most of my panda pictures. So now I keep a pony tail around the camera and that has seemed to keep it in place for now until I can find some gaffa tape. But I still got one great one and one pretty cool double exposure if not a little dark, I should probably invest in photoshop and then I could fix these things but thats a project for a later day I think.

So when I realised that the back was off I just finished up the roll so I could start a new one so there are quite a few pictures of the sunbears, I almost think that the back falling off made the pictures a bit brighter. Probably No but some came out awesome!

The Sun Bears just got fed so they were out and about getting their food!

  The black but in the centre is a Sun Bear I swear!

I was really impressed with the Panda exhibit, when they said that you would be going in with groups of 50 I really thought that it would be horrible to try to get a good photo or even a opportunity to see them but they did a great job!

Tian Tian

Yang Guang

The King penguins were awasy so there was no penguin parade, but the gentoos were nesting so watching them steal eachothers pebbles for nests was pretty funny, definately worth the trade off for the penguin parade.

And after all of that walking I felt about the same a the Sea Lion.

I really wanted to get this film developed so I ran on my lunch break taking photos along the way to finish off the roll and I got surprisingly good photos!

I have another film in the works, a black and white one this time! I am super excited to take more photos with this one, so far I took some at the National Gallery of Modern Art, we were there for the Edvard Munch exhibit of Lithographs but more on that soon!