As a general rule I try to avoid the centre of Edinburgh at most costs. Apart from popping into town for the occasional bite of food or dropping Liv off at work I never go into the centre just for the sake of it. Because of this I’m often not aware of events going on in town but I photographed a wedding at Lothian Chambers Registry Office yesterday and saw lots of signs about the roads in town being closed for the marathon.
I’ve never photographed a marathon before and I was in two minds whether to even stop and take photos, largely because Liv was working and I was on toddler duty but I dropped Liv off for work just before 9 and parked behind the National Museum of Scotland. The Bupa Great Edinburgh Run was due to start at 9.30 so after parking I took Amelia for a walk through Old Town (note: if you’re local and want to have a walk around town with few tourists, 9am on a Sunday morning is great) and over to St Giles where she had a good run around. I also took some stock photos of the outside of Lothian Chambers which I haven’t done before.
So just before 9.30 I took Amelia for a short trip to the Writers Museum square where she had lots of stairs to run up and and down then the athletes came past about 9.40. Thankfully Amelia was as good as gold and just stood next to me and watched the athletes pass by so I was able to move around a bit and rattle off some shots.
Overall the shots look pretty cool. I took most of the photos on the Mound which is the perfect place to watch athletes suffer (it’s short but really steep) and thus take lots of photos. It was also a really good test for the continuous tracking mode on my camera. My old camera, a Canon 1d3, which granted I barely shot any fast action or sports with, tended to hunt for focus a wee bit but my D4 locked onto and tracked everything perfectly.
This coming week I’m planning on taking photos of the Beltane Fire Festival which will be an even bigger test for my camera as it will be really dark but this year I’ve decided I’m going to try to do a lot more photography that I want to do so I’ll be travelling all over Scotland photographing events/landscapes and more.
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