Edinburgh in October is very cold. I could only manage two hours without retreating to my hotel room with a hot chocolate to warm up again. It’s also very photogenic and very easy to wander around and find interesting things to photograph.

Apart from the cold, it was also very grey. This can make it challenging to get Instagram-friendly city photos but the lack of harsh shadows makes it much easier to get evenly lit photos.

One thing that happens accidently on purpose a lot is taking totally out of focus night shots. I quite like the effect, sometimes more than the in focus photos. The first one is from the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, the second is from Malaga Old Town.

Here’s one from the Royal Mile, in focus. Probably should have removed the traffic cone.

One technique I like to use on dull days when the lighting is very flat is to underexpose by at least 1/3 of a stop using the cameras exposure compensation. In the image below I’ve also using the image editing software to in reduce the exposure more and brought down the exposure of the previously flat grey sky.

The following two photos also use this technique