Platform 13
A shot from the end of Platform 13, Glasgow Central Station. Just a quick snap while I was waiting for the train to Ayr, but I ended up quite liking it. The station itself was built in 1879, so it’s an odd mix of 19th century stone and glass with modern high speed trains, burger kings, coffee shops and bars. I’ve been getting the train between Ayr and Glasgow my entire life to see family, so Central Station always brings back a few childhood memories. It’s probably one of the places in Glasgow where I feel most at home, (apart from my flat), strange.
Just an old door…
This is the last of the pics from the alleyway. I realise it’s just an old graffiti ‘d door, but there was something I like about this. I messed around with it a bit and gave it some vignetting and added structure to the centre as well as blurring the far right a bit as well. Oh yeah, and the standard black and white conversion!
Double Yellow
Another shot from the alley the other night. Went for a selective colour edit on this one, not totally sure if it works though.
One of only a couple of good pics I got from an outing to Argyll Street, Glasgow, at around 1am. Anyone who knows Glasgow will know that hanging around alleyways in the city centre at 1am on a Thursday night is not too safe, so I didn’t hang around for long. As I was taking this shot two girl were fighting and screaming just round the corner from me, in another lane I think. Still I managed a couple of shots, so more to come.
The reason I went out that night was specifically to get shots of the dilapidated building in the background of this pic, but my standard 18-55mm lens is broken so I’m stuck with my 70-300mm, which is no good for getting shots that close from the street, hence why I ended up far back in the lane taking this.
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Glasgow Science Centre
A couple of pics from Glasgow Science centre on the River Clyde in the west side of the city. This was one fo the warmest days we’ve had so far this year in Scotland, so me and my friend made the most and got out in the sun, and wit a little persuasion I convinced him to come out with me while I got some shots. Unfortunately my camera has started to break, and doesn’t always manage to take a picture without making a terrible sound and coming up with an error message, so I didn’t manage too many shots. Currently working on getting a new camera!
We decided to walk back along the river towards the town. As we approached the one of the many bridges over the Clyde we noticed about 20-30 photographers all gathered at one point on the bridge. Not wanting to miss out on what they were all so interested in we walked along to where they were all stood. This is the reason they were all at that one point…
I guess the sun only sets between the Clyde Auditorium and the Hilton Garden Plaza (the building on the far left) for a few days of the year. I think I was pretty lucky to be down there by chance. This is one of the only decent shots I got of the sun setting between the two buildings. The crane is the Finnieston Crane, once used in on of Glasgow’s many shipyards before all but a few were closed. The crane is now disused, and there has been a lot of development of luxury flats and other buildings like the Science Centre all along the Clyde. The half built structure is going to be ‘the Hydro’, a new music venue on the site of the Scottish Exhibition and Conference Centre (SECC) and the Auditorium. I’m quite looking forward to it being finished, since it looks to be an interesting piece of modern architecture, adding another element to the mixture of buildings both old and new on this part of the river.
The Clyde at night
This shot was taken overlooking the bridge at the entrance to Glasgow Green, which by the way is not a fun place to walk about in at night! I love the colours in this shot, the lights certainly make it look much nicer than it does during the day.
Private Members
This is a shot from a month or so ago down by the River Clyde. I kind of overlooked it but I came across it earlier and decided to try and get a vintage camera effect on it by tweaking with the curves and stuff in Photoshop. For some reason actions wont work in my Photoshop, but it was easy enough to get a similar effect anyway.
Hello everyone. Needless to say I’ve been kept busy with work and uni as always, but in between I’ve managed to get out and get some shots in what has been some pretty decent weather for this time of year. Yesterday was an amazingly sunny day, which meant a complete abandoning of any notion of doing coursework and a day walking about in several of Glasgow’s lovely parks. Obviously though I forgot to take my camera….
These are a couple of shots from some other days. I love the graffiti which was taken from one of the bridges along the River Kelvin in the West End, especially the stencil of the guy with the camera (even though the quality isn’t great due to some heavy duty cropping…). I wonder if the person that did it knew people would take pictures of it, were they deliberately being ironic? I like to think so. I decided to go for a bit of colour selection for that one, just for fun really. The second shot is of the railway bridge over the river Clyde at Central Station. It’s not the best shot but I love all the old steel and brick work on this bridge. It also reminds me a lot of my childhood, getting the train from Prestwick to Glasgow to see my Gran and coming over the bridge as the train pulled into it’s last stop at Glasgow central.
Hope you like the pics guys, have a good weekend 
Change of scenery…
Hey folks, so once again it’s been a while since I posted anything, and once again it’s because life has decided to be a little bit mental over the past few weeks. I wont bore you all with the details, but long story short I no longer live in Edinburgh, I now live in Glasgow! But, I still work and go to Uni in Edinburgh…. I know that sounds mad, but it’s a lot of fun, and I get the best of both cities.
So, expect much less picturesque countryside pictures and castles, and much, much more gritty urban-ness from now on!
This pictures just a taste, I’ve yet to get out for a proper exploration with the camera. Also I finally got a new tripod, after Royal Mail decided to lose the other I ordered. Dying to get out at night for some shots, but even though I already know Glasgow reasonably well (the town I come from is only 40ish miles South of Glasgow) I’m a bit wary of wandering about at night with camera equipment. Although a great place to live, Glasgow is not famous for it’s safe streets and lack of crime…
The innocent tunnel
This is The Innocent Tunnel, formerly a railway tunnel but now part of a cycle path. I’m going to be lazy here, this is what Wikipedia says about it:
“The Innocent Railway is now a cycle path connecting central Edinburgh, at Newington and St. Leonard’s at its west end, with Duddingston, Niddrie and Craigmillar to the east. The path continues, directly linking Bingham and Brunstane.
The route has what might be Britain’s first railway tunnel built around 1830 by James Jardine, which stretches 350 yards under the southern edge of Holyrood Park and is open to the public, forming part of the cycle route through the park. There is also a cast iron bridge at the Duddingston Road junction which is one of the earliest surviving examples of its type. The route passes very near to, and affords a view of, the Scottish Wildlife Trust property of Duddingston Loch.”
It’s quite a creepy place to be, even during the day. It was pretty warm outside but with all the dripping from the damp walls and the fact that you can see your breath and hear every little movement echoed it was quite easy to forget about the sunshine outside, the only hint of it the light at the end of the tunnel. It doesn’t look that long in this picture, or when you’re in it, but it is very deceptive.
Apparently there are several tunnels like this in Edinburgh, I have just discovered. The rest aren’t strictly speaking open to the public, but access isn’t too bad, I’ve heard. Queue future spooky tunnel adventures!
P.S. I forgot to mention it’s called The Innocent Tunnel because it was part of “The Innocent Railway”, so called because it was horse drawn at a time when steam power was still considered dangerous. This is the official story, however another theory states that it is called this because no one died during the construction of the railway, which was fairly uncommon in those days.
Purchase a print of this photograph on Redbubble.com:
In reflection
This picture was taken a few weeks ago at the Shore in Leith, it’s the old harbour bridge which is only accessible to pedestrians these days as it can’t handle vehicles. There are boring looking modern style flats at each end of the bridge so I deliberately made sure they weren’t in the shot and ended up with this weird composition.
It’s actually sunny today, wahey! And I’m off work, double wahey! After exploring one side of Holyrood Park so much I’m going to explore the other side today, apparently there’s a Loch and stuff so I’ll hopefully have some nice pictures of that to post. There is also an old railway tunnel (now turned cycle path) that is 517 metres long so I’m going to check that out and try for some motion blur shots of some fast moving cyclists, or just some creepy tunnel shots.
Anyway hope you like this shot, I was a bit unsure about it but it’s grown on me.
We’ve had loads of night like this recently. The weathers horrible all day then as soon as it comes to sunset the colours burst through, I love it. I was down at Leith docks to try and get some gritty, industrial images, and ended up with this. It’s another HDR from three exposures. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to post this shot or not due to the over-processed factor. But, after looking at it over and over again I couldn’t tell if it did look over-processed or not, so you can be the judge.
I was thinking of entering this into Amateur Photographer/The Scotsman’s “wish you were here” competition. The theme is maritime and seaside photography of Britain, which should encapsulate Britain’s coastal landscape. You would think that would be easy but I’ve been finding it difficult to find an original location or concept for that ‘perfect’ entry, but I’ll keep trying. Expect lots of pictures along the lines of this theme over the next few weeks…
Outside in the wasteland
These shots are from the same outing to the old tram works in Leith that these pics came from, but from around the outside of the buildings. I had completely forgotten about these pics until I saw Astra Wally’s post featuring a couch, and I was reminded of the couch in the first image. I love these old buildings because they have so much character and the old design, especially the round windows, looks great. Most of the graffiti is in the inside of the buildings but there is some on the outside and the blue graffiti next to the couch is my favourite.
I considered doing these shots in black and white, but I quite liked the colourful graffiti in the first pic and also the contrast between the red brick and the blue sky in the other two. All three were put through single image HDR toning in Photoshop CS5, but only with a little editing to bring out the detail as I wanted to keep them looking natural. Other than that the only other changes were in the colour curves to bring out the red in the brickwork, as well as a few adjustments to exposure and contrast levels, again to help bring out the details.
Derelict tram works, Leith
I’m really liking this style of industrial, run-down, urban photography at the moment. During my outing to the old social work building in Leith I notices another derelict building across a piece of waste land. I did a bit of research and found out it was the old Shrubhill tram depot. Apparently there used to more of it, but it was knocked down (I guess that’s what the wasteland used to be). The last tram ever to run in Edinburgh finished its route at this depot when tram services ceased in the city in the 1950′s. As you can probably see from the pictures the building is now seriously run-down, which is a shame because its a nice old building. Having said that I don’t think these shots would have been as nice without the degree of urban decay that’s went on over the years. Its funny that what most people see as a ruined building others see as being quite beautiful.
I’m entering the second picture into the Amateur Photographer of the Year competition, round 2: inside a building. I’m sure there’ll be a fair few derelict building shots entered, but I thought I might as well give it a shot.
Obsolete
So I went a wander towards the docks yesterday and managed to find a way onto an old part of the harbour near the casino in Leith, where I found three old cranes. I managed to get some great black and white shots of them, I’ll probably post more. There were loads of birds living in the cranes, so it’s nice to know they’re not completely disused!
