Trying to rediscover my photography spark in Edinburgh

For the past few years I've had, or having, what I'm kind of referring to in conversation as a bit of a photography crisis. The last time I posted and did anything meaningful on here was June 2023 and without going into a total trauma dump, I just sort of got to a point with photography where I didn't really know what I was doing or why I was doing it. Since 2023 I've moved house, moved jobs, and breaking news: have gotten engaged this year and it's fair to say my life has changed quite a bit! But I just didn't have the same passion to go out with a camera, take photos and make blog posts like I used to. I had other things going on, other things I was focusing on e.t.c and photography took a back seat for a while. It's not that I didn't take any photos, I did, and maybe I'll share them in another post another time or something, but I didn't really take photos with purpose like I used to. And I'm not about to pretend that I'm "back" or anything like that. I did that post already last year - and then deleted it, because I wasn't... - but I did take steps to at least try and see how I felt about photography again. Last week. Me and my now fiancée went to Edinburgh, for future proofing purposes; March 2026, and although a photo trip wasn't the primary purpose of the visit, I still didn't want to be travelling without a camera! So I took along my Canon Powershot SX720. I really like this camera but I don't use it a whole lot as I love my G7X Mark II so much, and that is always my first choice travel camera, but I took a different kind of approach this time and decided I wanted something much simpler. Despite having P Tv Av M (or P A S M) modes and a good level of control over settings, I tend to keep my SX720 purely on auto everything and just focus on composition, treating it as a sort of higher spec digital point and shoot. And that's what I did here as I walked around Edinburgh and picked the places I wanted to visit.

These pictures are totally unedited and straight out of camera, so sure I could tweak the brightness, tweak the contrast, tweak the saturation e.t.c. but I wanted to just share these exactly as they turned out. I'm really happy with the photos I got. I had the weather on my side - for one day at least... so it was bright and sunny but I really like them. They're so sharp and considering I shot on auto, mostly really well balanced. And one of the things I love about the SX720, and my main reason for buying it really, is the crazy 40x zoom! Meaning I can crop right close up in camera like I have done with that second photo of Edinburgh Castle's flag. I did take that shot on burst mode, you can decide if that's cheating or not!

I had a spare day to myself and one of the things on my agenda for the week was a trip to Tynecastle Park, home of Heart of Midlothian football club (at time of writing top of the league with 63 points! First time a team outside of Glasgow could win the league in nearly 40 years!). Not for any other reason than I'm kind of into Scottish Football, and thought it would be cool to go and see the ground! So I took a walk there from our hotel room that spare morning to grab some photos.

Unfortunately about as much as I could get because it was about 10.00am on a Tuesday and everywhere was shut! But I'm still glad I did it and was cool to get some shots of a football ground. Something I definitely want to do more of as / when I'm travelling around now to maybe build up something of an album! Easter Road was also loosely on the agenda; home of Edinburgh's other team; Hibernian, but we had rain and high winds for the rest of the week so decided to save that for another time! I took a handful of snaps of a few other things I saw whilst out and about. Edinburgh has a whole plethora of statues, cool buildings, and just interesting to stuff to go look at and photograph but I couldn't cover everything in one day so stuck to what I wanted to see; the Castle, the Cathedral and Tynecastle Park. Some of the other cool things that I liked though;

Scott Monument is also always worth going to see but is so bloody large and on a very busy Princes Street, so it can be difficult to get a nice shot of it! But I'm pleased with the two I got. So I guess, to circle back to the beginning, did taking my SX720 to Edinburgh help me sort of rediscover my spark for photography again? Well, yeah I think it did. Being in the city, going to Tynecastle Park with the purpose of; I'm here to take photos, getting back home and seeing what they look like on my PC and then writing this post to share them? It did give my photography something of a purpose again and I do want to go out and try and be more creative with photography, play around with film cameras again, and then blog about them. And on that tangent I bought an old USSR Zenit E from a car boot sale last year that I took a handful of photos with, put down and then haven't used again, so maybe watch this space. But yeah I've sort of spent some time away from photography but now I think I'd like to come back and do more with it. Hopefully this post just doesn't sort of languish on it's own for the next 12 months!