My walk began from the Edinburgh Train station at the edge of the Old Town, where doors still bear medieval carvings — skulls, bones, and worn Latin reminders that time waits for no one. Walking through Edinburgh, the symbols of faith and mortality intermingle with worn stone stair treads and long forgotten graves marked by weathered headstones. The weight of centuries is in every surface: soot-darkened sandstone, worn cobbles, narrow and winding passageways cutting through the city and suddenly vanishing into expansive boulevards and blinding sunlight.
Inside St Giles’ cathedral, light poured through stained glass in thick beams that illuminated the grandeur of the expansive 14th century nave. The vaulted ceilings, and stone ribs draw the eye upward, always upward, toward the faint outline of angels cut from light and shadow beckoning toward heaven.
Outside again, I pause again to look upward at the great window of the kirk,. Only to be anchored back to the present by (I presume) a “social influencer” appearing to be setting up a phone on a tripod. The kirk remains unmoved — patient as ever, unlike the fleeting appetite of his “followers” and the modern world circumscribing the Old City.
From the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle, the city stretched to the North Sea. A slight, sharp, but welcome breeze foreshadowing, at the edge of my subconscious, the winter to come. In every direction, standing upon the castle walls, was not the ideal of beauty, but rather an effortlessness of persistence; a timeless confidence. Simply, Edinburgh is.
Edinburgh invites quiet — the kind of stillness that lets you hear your own footsteps echo off the past. To momentarily internalize the struggles, celebrations and violence that are rooted and fixed into the stones of the buildings and roads by the countless souls of Edinburgh. To experience a small moment in the stream of history, even as throngs of tourists march by to take the castle – or at least take pictures of their conquest from the ramparts. Pausing only briefly to read each placard denoting a history of that place, while refusing to acknowledge the constant passage of time. Their moments do not exist as part of the history of Edinburgh nor does the stalwart Castle protecting it notice their trespasses.
Gear Notes
These images were captured on a Meyer-Optik Görlitz Lydith 30mm f/3.5, my preferred vintage lens for soft-edged monochrome work. Its slightly diffused rendering brings atmosphere to stone and sky, pulling tones into a painterly midrange. A few of the panoramic shots from the castle were made using a modern Sony 28mm prime, for edge-to-edge sharpness when capturing skyline contrast under changing light.
