Back Alley - Edinburgh, Scotland

This is another in my series to re-edit a photo from the past that I edited quite poorly and posted on my blog as I thought it was good, but now realize that it wasn't. In some of my previous posts, I had blamed my poor results on my then rudimentary HDR editing skills. Can't do that on this one, as this definitely was not a HDR, which proves that I could be equally bad with other editing programs. The originally edited photo has a lot going wrong in it: over saturation, crooked buildings, and buildings that actually seem to glow. Hopefully, I have corrected these mistakes and now present a more natural photo.

When I took this photo back in 2007, it was the deserted alley that I was trying to convey along with the age of the architecture. The reason that I shot it was also related to the scenes on the rest of the alleys and streets. We visited Edinburgh during  their Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. The Tattoo is a famous show that features military bands as part of the Edinburgh Festival that is held in August each year. The Festival attracts over 200,000 people and it seemed that there were at least that many on the streets. What amazed me most about this scene is that there was no one in this alley, unlike almost every other alley that I passed that day. It's like the photography gods wanted me to shoot this scene.