Weekly Photo Challenge: Companionable

It’s the WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge.

This is much more than your opportunity to flood the internet with cat photos (although the internet’s ability to absorb cat photos is infinite, so one can never have too many). Your companion might be a pet, or your partner or progeny. Maybe it’s an object you unconsciously fiddle with as you work, a view that keeps you company, an album that helps you stay grounded, or a hobby you use to unwind at the end of each day. (If your companion is actually a low-ranking knight, you win.)

As it happens, I was working on these views of Edinburgh when I looked at the Challenge to see whether the images would fit.

And the view does keep me company because it is the dominant skyline as I walk across the Links and the Meadows into Edinburgh.

I remember the first impression I had of Edinburgh. We’d parked the car in the Travelodge on the south side of the city and took the bus into the city centre.

As we passed the High Street/Royal Mile, I looked up the street and was knocked back for a second.

It looked so strong and dark and brooding and powerful and heavy and – and not somewhere to cuddle up to, which is kind of what I like in architecture – somewhere to be comfortable with – to soothe the soul and ease its passage through the day.

But the people here make up for the dour buildings.

At the top of the High Street/Royal Mile there is the castle – and that is what you can see in these views – peeking out from behind the terrace at the lower end of the Links.

I shot this with a 300mm lens (450mm equivalent in full frame) so the view is foreshortened and compressed. But as I walk into town, my eyes leapfrog the buildings and settle on the castle, so the long lens mirrors what my eyes do.

Why There Are Three Versions

I did the black and white conversion because I wanted to check how the dust spots would appear with different treatments. (Laurie noticed that the image in a previous post had spots on it.)

So I tried different blending modes between the monochrome and coloured versions and it occurred to me that while I didn’t particularly like all of them – we are all different.

So which do you like best?