Edinburgh Gormley 6 Challenge

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About Edinburgh Gormley 6 Challenge

IDEA

The idea of this group is to be a long term evolving photographically educational project and competition of photographs of the six Edinburgh Gormley figures. I'm provisionally setting a competition closing date of 21st March 2012 to give plenty of time. The following description and rules will be improved. Comments and suggestions welcomed.


The Gormley 6 (aka Six Times)

There are six Anthony Gormley "standing man" statues in Edinburgh. They run in a roughly north east direction from the first, which is in the street at the entrance to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, to the sixth, which is at Ocean Terminal. The rest are standing in the water along the Water of Leith. They are visible from nearby bridges over the Water of Leith, and also from the Walkway which now runs beside the Water of Leith for most of the way between the Gallery and Ocean Terminal.



Click through that map of their locations to see a larger version with links to more detailed maps of the location of each individual figure. Those are snapshots (screenshots) taken from the zoomable and pannable Googlemaps Gormley figure locator on the Scottish National Galleries web page below.

www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/in_focus/4:19344/193...

For more details of the National Galleries "Six Times" distributed Gormley art work see the National Galleries website.

"Six Times" in focus


Getting down to the Water of Leith Walkway

This Walkway now extends almost all the way along the side of the Water of Leith from the Modern Art Gallery to Ocean Terminal. It's a very pleasant and photogenic walk in its own right, quite apart from offering many interesting views of the Gormley figures. There is a path down from the car park at the back side of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art to the Walkway from which you can see the second Gormley figure, the first in the Water of Leith. The Walkway will then take you past all the others.

The Walkway is in itself well signposted, and is also part of the excellent Edinburgh cycle path network. But it's not well represented or easy to follow on the ordinary car-oriented public maps, especially the sometimes well camouflaged connections between it and the streets. As a general rule there's often connections close to the bridges over the Water of Leith.

Here is a map of the part of it between the Visitor Centre and Stockbridge.



For more details of the Walkway see the web site of the Water of Leith Conservation Trust and the bookshop in the Visitor Centre.

www.waterofleith.org.uk/

From your local bicycle shop or direct from the Spokes website you should also be able to get a map of the Edinburgh Cycle paths which includes the Water of Leith Walkway.

www.spokes.org.uk/wordpress/spokes-maps/

The Walkway is bike navigable all the way between the Gallery and Ocean Terminal if you don't mind having to take it up and down some steps (which are usually thoughtfully provided with bike wheel gutters at the side). There is a short missing section between the bridge at Canonmills and the Warriston Road bridge where you have to follow the Water of Leith on the ordinary street network.


Photo Submission Rules

The idea is to end up doing your best to produce technically good and visually interesting images, hopefully good enough to exhibit. You can submit up to five for each figure. You can revise your submissions as often as you like. That's to encourage you to submit early and revise later. The idea of that is to inspire and challenge others by seeing what you've done. If you want to know how someone got such a good shot or effect, ask them in a comment on their photo. To encourage helpful descriptions and replies there's a winning category of "the most educational photo".

The submitted photographs will be divided into five categories.

-- * Landscape style shots (the figure or part of it in interesting surroundings)
-- * Portrait style shots (isolating the figure or part of it)
-- * Staged shots (using friends, accessories, etc.)
-- * Event documentary shots (knocked down by flood water etc.)
-- * Edited shots (Wow! how did you get that weird effect? etc,)

Too many categories? Not enough? What about a strobist category? Mist? Moonlight? Post your ideas and comments to the group discussions!

Submitted photographs should identify which of the six Gormley figures they are of, and which category, by means of two tags. The first tag should be Gormley1 (outside Gallery) to Gormley6 (at Ocean Terminal) to identify which figure. The second tag should identify category by one of Landscape, Portrait, Staged, Event, & Edited. The photographs should also be geotagged. You may find the maps above helpful in locating your geotag in Flickr's map, which is pretty vague about the Water of Leith.

Each photographer can submit five photographs of each figure, which allows one of each category, five of one category, or any combination.

You can keep changing your entries so long as the total numbers obey the group rules (five photos per figure). I hope that people will be inspired and challenged by the photographs of others to keep improving their own submissions. That's the idea of allowing months. I hope photographers will include some comment on what they were trying to do and how they did it, and will offer helpful advice to others about how to improve their photographs.


Closing Date

The competition will be judged in January 2011 by the votes of members of the group who have submitted valid photographs. But not just to pick out winners. There will be an exhibition of the best which will be as large as the the exhibition space will allow. Plus other possibilities such as a book of photographs, calendar, etc..


Winning Categories

There will be a winning photograph in each category for each figure, plus the extra category of "most educational". That's the photograph which you learned the most from looking at, including reading any accompanying descriptions of how it was done and why. The idea behind the winning category of "most educational" is to encourage that kind of helpful description, comment, and question and answer about photographs. I want this to be among other things a study group in which we help each other to improve our photography skills.

That makes six judging categories of Landscape, Portrait, Staged, Event, Edited, & Most Educational. The first five categories come from the tags set by the photographer. The "Most Educational" category is selected from all the others by votes.


Organised Group Photo Walk past all the statues

To be arranged. But you don't have to wait for it to explore on your own, or to set up your own ad hoc invitations to figure photography walks and part walks via the Edinburgh Meetups Group.

www.flickr.com/groups/edinburghmeetups/


Exhibition

There will be an exhibition based on the photographs of the winners and runners up. Details to be arranged.


The Other Edinburgh Gormley Group

(Note that there is another Flickr Group devoted to these Gormley figures in Edinburgh, "6 Times".

http://www.flickr.com/groups/6times/

The emphasis of that group is on Gormley's art work and photographic documentary of it. This group is a photographic project which happens to use the Gormley figures as a convenient subject. No competition -- submit to both or either as you please and as appropriate.)


Questions, suggestions, etc.

If a suitable topic covering your question or comment is not already running in the group discussions please start one. This is an early draft of the project/competition description.

Chris Malcolm (admin) 2010/08/26