Waking up in Scotland was almost picture perfect. The room Dara and I shared looked right out onto the street, buzzing with people and shops. Getting up here was easy, because you truly looked forward to how the day was going to be spent.
Today we got to visit two different places for media lectures. At the first one we get a lot of inside information about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Apparently Pittsburgh has one too but I personally have never heard of it (so that was cool to have this connection with them). Oliver Davies (Olly) gave us some awesome insight to all of the fringe history. Not only that but he talked a lot about how Fringe does as much as they can to cater to those with handicaps/special needs. You rarely hear about festivals in America doing stuff like this, we should really take a few notes from what Fringe is doing and apply them.
A few of us spent lunch at a cute little cafe and then it was off to our very last media visit. Walking into Whitespace I knew immediately I wanted to be here someday. This was my favorite media visit overall.
We got to meet a commercial photographer, David Anderson, whose job I aspire to have someday. He started out not really knowing what he was doing, but then quickly found his way through experimenting and trying out new experiences. My future career goals are to work for a magazine as a photographer and or get into creating photos for advertisements.
I loved his lecture because he talked about the importance of connecting with the people you’re shooting. Being a photographer I know this isn’t always as simple as it seems. But when the time comes and you’re only given four frames to get a good shot, you have to figure something out quickly. Cracking jokes, according to David, always gets your subjects feeling more comfortable.
The rest of the night was free to do as we pleased. However it was David (our tour director’s) 30 birthday! So of course we had to go out to dinner to celebrate. A few of us stumbled upon a little outdoor bar area the night before, so we decided to go back and check it out. Needless to say it was another awesome night spent bonding. I already knew I was going to be missing these kind of nights with my friends when we got back to Pittsburgh. 🙁
