Not Sleeping Beauty

Sometime all this Fringe promotion is just too much...

The day started out with some torrential rain and I had decided after the past few days to relax and rest my poor aching feet, however the sun came out after lunch and I grabbed my bag, threw a jumper and cagoule into it along with my camera and hopped on a bus into town. Must make the best of the sunshine when I can.

Taking photographs in bright sunshine is not as easy as it sounds, especially on a crowded street. The main problem is that although the sun gives a nice strong light source it also means there are strong contrasting shadows, the human eye (or mind) manages to automatically compensate and very often you won't notice the dark shadows but they do show up on a photograph and ruin the shot. Your best bet is to try and take shots with the sun directly behind you and hence in front of the subject so there is no shadow, of course if your subject is a person they are likely to be squinting or shading their eyes, and on a crowded and chaotic street you often don't get a second chance.

Luckily this young lady was not moving and had her eyes closed so I managed to get an angle where the shadows weren't too bad. Quite a few performers seem to think it's a good idea to get a number of their performers to lie around in poses in the middle of the street, this DOES tend to attract attention as it creates space, most people will walk around them instead of over them. And I guess also it doesn't wear out the performers before their show, however this crowd did not have flyers lying around so I'm not entirely sure what show they were promoting, somebody DID hand me a flyer it MIGHT have been "A Midsummer Night's Dream" I'll update this post if I can confirm this another day.

Edit: They were in fact promoting "Echo & Narcissus", just goes to show that they might look good but aren't promoting their show very well :-)