More from the Edinburgh Festival
A Charlie Chaplin impersonator and a guy drawing a pentagram on the ground, on the Royal Mile, Edinburgh.
Evil mermaid
A girl dressed as a mermaid on the royal mile, an evil mermaid with red eyes and pointy teeth… Gotta love the festival.
Golden Girl
One of the street performers on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh during the Edinburgh festival. She was painted head to toe in gold, hence the name of the post. Thought I would try out a tilt shift – style edit on this one. I wasn’t sure about it, but it’s grown on me.
Anyone for mulled wine?
These are the last couple of pictures from the market, for now anyway. I was thinking about going out and getting some more of the people at the market, the stalls and people enjoying all the tasty treats, so there could be more to come!
The first shot is one of the stalls that sells mulled wine (or Gluhwein if you’re German). It’s honestly the best mulled wine I’ve ever tasted, somehow even better than I remembered it from last year. They also sell firepunch (not totally sure what that is) but the mulled wine does the trick for me. Nothing better to heat you up in this cold weather!
The second shot is kind of an abstract one, I was just trying out different shots of the hats (they have a lot of novelty hat stalls at the German market, which makes sense given how cold it is!). This one was my favourite with all the colours and the bokeh, for me it sort of sums up the atmosphere you get at the German market.
Hope you all like 
Baubles!
Another couple of pictures from the Christmas market. I was trying to focus in on the baubles to get some nice bokeh effects. I tried catching some reflections in the baubles as well, not sure whethr those shots worked though so I might post them later, we’ll see. To be honest I’m not totally sure about these pictures but I think it’s just because I’ve gotten too used to landscape stuff. I was hoping to have some snow landscape pics by now, but no snow so far just lots of wind unfortunately!
On a different note tomorrow is the hand in date for my last essay for this term, then I’m off uni until January 16th, yay! So yeah, I should probably get on with that essay then…
Officially the run up to Christmas
Well, it is in Edinburgh anyway. The German market and all the attractions that come with it are here! The whole of Princes Street Gardens East gets transformed at this time of year into a winter fairground complete with an ice rink and the big wheel in the picture above. As well as this we have lots of stalls that sell German food and drink, as well as lots of other types of food, local and from further afield, and lots of Christmas trinkets, jewellery and other stuff. The whole place smells of amazing food – bratwurst, mulled wine, waffles, burgers, chestnuts, chocolate…. I’m making myself hungry here! Basically, its awesome. I love the German market!
I know I haven’t been posting much lately, but I finish uni next week and I only have a few essays left to do and I’m free for the holidays (well, from uni at least), so hopefully I’ll a few more regular posts over the next week, with more pics from the German market for you all.
Also no snow so no Edinburgh snow pics yet, but it’s getting pretty cold so it’ll only be a matter of time I think.
Hope you like the pictures to come, and that they can give you a littel taste of our awesome Christmas market/fair
Beltane Fire Festival
I mentioned that I was at the Beltane Fire Festival on Saturday night, so here’s a post with some of my best pictures form the night and also a (hopefully brief) explanation of just exactly what the Beltane is all about.
The Beltane is a Celtic pagan festival which has been celebrated in Celtic countries, such as Scotland and Ireland, for thousands of years. It marks the passing of the colder winter months through spring and into summer. Every year the Beltane Fire Society puts on the festival on Calton Hill in Edinburgh, with around 15,000 people attending each year. I’m going to do my best to explain the ceremony here.
The night focuses on the May Queen and the Green Man, or May King as he is also sometimes known. The May King starts the night as the Old Horned God, who dies upon touching the May Queen. He is then stripped of his clothes by the May Queens hand maidens, and is reborn as the Green King, which is acted out through an energetic dance.
The May Queen is also accompanied by the 4 ‘Whites’ who represent North, South, East and West, as well as the White Gaurd.
The ‘Blues’ are led by the Blue Man, and although the May Queen and King come and go each year and are reborn, the Blue Man remains constant, overseeing each Beltane and the passing over of the Spring to the Summer.
In addition to the ‘Blues’ and the ‘Whites’ the procession is followed by the arrival of the ‘Reds’, who symbolise chaos and disorder. Accompanied by the ‘Beastie’ drummers they attempt to disrupt the procession and the subsequent rebirth of the Old Horned God into the May King, but are however thwarted each year.
Guarding the boundaries of the procession and providing light (both in a literal and spiritual sense) are the torch bearers, who aid the Blue Man in overseeing the procession.
This is the ritualistic side of the Beltane, it also generally involves lots of people descending on Calton Hill to drink and have a good time amongst the members of the procession and assorted fire jugglers. There are burger vans and toilets provided and overall the whole night is about celebrating this ancient ceremony as well as having a good time welcoming in the summer with friends.
I hope this explains it well enough, if it doesn’t you can get more details here.
Some of these pictures aren’t the greatest, I was forced to use flash at some points and I also had to bump the ISO way up to 1600, so quite a bit of noise unfortunately. Asides from that I was kneeling down at the front of the crowd with loads of people pushing behind me to get a look at what was going on. Autofocus was out fo the question so it was literally a case of compose, focus, and then do it again for each individual shot as everyone moved around. Oh and I had also drank a bottle of wine…ahem.
I tried to get pictures of everyone involved in the ceremony, hope you like!
