Tuesday 21 August 2018

Tales of a Blindy Photographer: The missing subject

A slender lighthouse almost hidden by a large brick object in the foreground of the image. In the background is the Firth of Forth, the wide river estuary to the north of Edinburgh.


Wherever I travel I love to take photographs, but sometimes being visually impaired means it isn't all plain sailing. Some might call these “blind fails”, but to me they're just a consequence of attempting to take pictures with rather imperfect vision. 

There was a good example today. I was wandering along the quayside at Newhaven in Edinburgh ( yes, it was a surprise to me too that there is a Newhaven in Scotland, though when really thinking about it, what's really surprising is that there aren't more around the country) attempting to find the Light House restaurant, and pausing every so often to snap an image of the harbour below me. I thought at one point that I had found the lighthouse after which the establishment was named. It seemed to be one of those old fashioned types, part of a general building rather than standing tall and alone on the water's edge, and I took a few shots from across the road. 

It was only when, several hours later, flicking through the photos I had taken that I came across one with a strange pencil like structure almost hidden by a brick wall I had deliberately included in the foreground. Yes, of course it was the lighthouse, but what of the building I had previously mistaken for it? 
A church, viewed from across the road which runs along the harbour side.


Well, that turned out to be a church spire, perhaps a lighthouse of the sorts, guiding the souls of mariners rather than lighting the way home. 

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