Around Bangour

Posted on by

Situated outside Livingston, the psychiatric hospital at Bangour Village was founded in 1906 as Edinburgh District Asylum – one of the first in Scotland to be modelled on a village. In 1918 it housed up to 3000 patients. During the second World War, patients were transferred temporarily to Hartwoodhill Hospital. Around 1924-1930 it gained a multi-denominational church in the centre of the village.

These days the site consists of several listed buildings, most in increasing states of decay – ideal territory for urban exploration.

A few views from ground level:

And a handful of photos made with the drone:

Also see an aerial 360ยบ drone panorama of Bangour I made using Hangar360.

 

The final ward closed in 2004 – worryingly one of those “in my lifetime” things…

Hogmanay 2016/2017

Posted on by

Happy new year! I saw the year in from Blackford Hill looking at the fireworks over Edinburgh Castle.

Watching folks arrive was almost like a scene from Lord of the Rings – this line of torch lights processing along the hillside track, reminiscent of the last march of the Elves.

Edinburgh Fog

Posted on by

On Sunday, on a whim, I went down to Edinburgh. As always, the city was fairly heaving but I revisited one of my favourite locations – the Radical Road along the Salisbury Crags, which affords an excellent view from Blackford Hill round to the Parliament buildings.

So I tested the Pen-F’s timelapse video ability for the first time. The camera makes it a breeze: set up the scene (lots of filters to cope with the lighting), set it in aperture-priority mode, 300 frames at 5s intervals, push the button and off it goes. And nature provided! – simply point the camera at the city and watch the sea haar roll in, great low clouds of misty fog, obscuring the castle within minutes.

First time I’ve made a 4K video… unfortunately the results from the camera weren’t quite up to the quality I expected, so I reprocessed all the RAW ORF files on the notebook in bulk (using RawTherapee) and rendered the official video myself with ffmpeg.

I also made a wide panorama – 5 frames each in 80-megapixel high resolution mode; lots of image data, nicely stitched in Hugin as usual.

Forth Railway Bridge

Posted on by

A friend of mine has regularly suggested that someone seems to dot road-signs saying “Take Photo Here” around the landscape. The view of the Forth Road Bridge from South Queensferry is one location where such a sign would not be out of place, but still, heading home from Edinburgh late one afternoon, it had to be done.

A classic shot - a long exposure black and white image of the Forth Railway Bridge from South Queensferry

A classic shot – a long exposure black and white image of the Forth Railway Bridge from South Queensferry