7 Tips to shoot the Edinburgh Festivals

It’s festival time in Edinburgh and a great opportunity to get some great shots of street performers. Here are seven ways to improve your pictures of the Edinburgh Festivals.

Welcome to Edinburgh and over the next three weeks, this is going to be the home to many, many festivals. And over the next few minutes, I'm going to show you a few tips to getting great-looking photographs while you're here in the city of Edinburgh.

Hi there. My name is Rich Dyson from Edinburgh Photography Workshop and this is Coffee Break Photography. We can see I’m in my hometown of Edinburgh. And over the next few weeks, this is going to be home to a number of festivals. We have the world-famous Edinburgh Fringe Festival. But the Fringe Festival was a counter to the Edinburgh International Festival, which also takes place in the city during August. And that's where we have things like opera, ballet, performances which are reasonably highbrow. We also have a book festival, there's a film festival, there's an art festival, and there's also up there in the castle just behind my shoulder, the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

So, with all these festivals taking place, it's a fantastic place to be where you can take some fantastic photography opportunities. And over the next few minutes, I'm going to show you some little tips on how you can get some really great pictures while you're here in the city of Edinburgh. If you don't have the chance to come to Edinburgh, don't worry, you can still use these tips anywhere you go where there's festivals taking place.

So, let's start off with the very first one of those, and that's to give yourself a sense of place. So we're in the city of Edinburgh. When I'm trying to take a photograph, I try to show that we are in the city of Edinburgh. There's lots of really, really good places that you can show Edinburgh to be. Yeah, we've got the castle behind me. We've also got the Balmoral Hotel, which is very famous. We've got St. Giles' Cathedral on the Royal Mile. So there's places that you can show you in the city. So, use that as a background to capture pictures with performers just in front of.

Okay, tip number two is try out different locations. A lot of people will always head to the Royal Mile in Edinburgh because that's the place where the they think street performers will play. But if you check out the website for the Fringe Festival, edfringe.com, you'll see there's plenty of opportunities all around the city where street performers are performing. For instance, here I am on the Mound and one of the performers is just about to start.

So, hint number three is to change your perspectives. Most people take photographs standing up and that's basically the way we see the world. If you can change the angle that you're taking a photograph from by getting on the floor, for instance, or getting up some steps, you start to see the world in a different way.  All of a sudden your pictures become a lot more interesting.

Tip number four, when you’re photographing street performers like what’s happening behind me at the moment, is to include the crowd inside of the image. Quite often their reaction is just as important as the performance of the street performer. And by including the crowds, you start to capture the colour and the excitement and the fun of the festival.

Tip five, get close. You can see this is really close to the camera. It changes the entire perspective from when I was standing back here. So, if you take photographs nice and close, you're going to get something much, much different to what you would normally see if you were standing four or five feet away. And don't forget, these people are here to perform, so you can get rid of your inhibitions. If you need to, just go up to another chat and say, "You want to take a really interesting photograph and you mind if you come in nice and close?" And most times they're going to say yes. So if you put a picture up onto social media and include the name of the show, then they're going to get a lot better publicity. You never know, you might even speak to them and you might want to actually go and see the show yourself and that’s going to give them a little bit of cash into their hands and that’s really difficult when you’ve got over 3000 shows playing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

So the final tip for the day is to think about light. You can see it's one of the dull overcast days in Edinburgh and that's actually fantastic for taking pictures during the festival because the light's nice and soft and we get some really even light hitting the subjects. If we get a sunny day, if we do, you know not always, then that's when you need to start thinking about adding flash into your photographs. And remember, flash isn't there to light the scene. What it's there to do is to just fill in the shadows into the subject you're shooting. So you don't really need to add a big bang of flash. You'll set it as low as you can and just fill in the shadows into the eyes.

And there we have it, seven ways to shoot the Edinburgh festivals. If you found this content interesting, it'd be great if you would like it and share it. That's where I get a few more followers. Speaking of followers, it'd be great if you would subscribe to the channel by clicking down here. I have a newsletter to send out to subscribers. You can subscribe by clicking on this QR code up here.

My name's Rich Dyson from Edinburgh Photography Workshop. This has been Coffee Break Photography, and I look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.