St James Quarter

St. James Quarter is Edinburgh’s bold contemporary retail and leisure development at the east end of Princes Street. Old meets new in this blue hour frame, with a railed historic fence tapering to the left and people gathered on the lit public plaza to the right. Warm interior light spills from the modern stone-and-glass frontage, and centre frame is the complex’s bronze-clad spiral W Hotel, nicknamed the ‘walnut whip’, (for obvious reasons). The setting is relatively flat with a slightly sloped view toward the sculpture-like hotel. It is a thoroughfare and busy, but breaks in the passers by are fairly frequent.

A year-round blue-hour subject with interesting modern and heritage elements. This composition works better in winter as the leafless trees don’t obscure the building frontage, but moving around and trying other views is recommended at any time of year. A super-wide lens on a tripod was used for this image and it was taken while the festive lights added a bit more of a twinkle to the right of the image. Interior options are also interesting.