Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2014 with a 300mm 2.8

It’s that Edinburgh Fringe Festival time of the year again and although I’m a bit late in the festival posting this blog post, largely because I didn’t think I would even check it out at all, I finally had several walk arounds and here are just a few photos I took.

A little bit of information about the Fringe for those who know little or nothing about it. The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (correct name but we call it “The Fringe” or as us locals call it, “That F**king Fringe” (more on this below)) is the largest arts festival in the world spanning 3.5 weeks with over 3000 performances/shows performed by people from all over the world.

Essentially the Fringe is huge. The Royal Mile, which draws in the majority of tourists due to the constant free performances, is busy enough any time of the year but walking along there during the Fringe can get a wee bit claustrophobic. And that’s why we locals call it “That F**king Fringe”. The Fringe is great for the local economy but it also makes the roads even more unbearable than normal and makes doing most things in Edinburgh really hard.

But back to the photos. I recently hired a Nikon 300mm f2.8 lens to photograph a couple events (this is a £4000, 2.9kg lens) so I thought I’d do something a wee bit different and have a wander around with a fixed focal length lens, albeit a bloody heavy one. The performers around the Royal Mile expect to have their photos taken and most pose just fine, but I think the sheer size of this lens scared a few of the performers but shooting with a fixed focal length lens (a lens that doesn’t zoom basically) really makes you think about your composition. The image quality is also simply stunning, especially when shot wide open at 2.8 and viewed full size in print or on a computer monitor.

I won’t really write a lot about the photos, apart from the man and lady dressed in pink suits. Just in case you hadn’t guessed what they are wearing, well, they are dressed to look like private parts. The lady was an especially good vagina and she went through a whole range of emotions from sad vagina to deliriously happy dancing around vagina. Only at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe!