I was taking a cut-through from St Stephen Street and blocking my view (it was stopped at traffic lights) was this rubbish lorry. We used to call them the bucketmen and I’m not sure when buckets became bins. Perhaps around the same time that the word lorry was replaced with the Americanised truck?

It’s not what one would call a beautiful view, but just look at the design that’s gone into it. The colour scheme on the buttons, the shapes and spacing – so much detail on what is, after all, a completely utilitarian vehicle. I got just one shot before the lights changed and the truck moved off.

It was one of those blustery, chilly days and I was at the front at Silverknowes. I went into the little cafe which is one of the most uninspiring places I know to have a cup of coffee. Approaching the counter, I heard two voices yelling, a man and a woman.

The argument was conducted in Russian and the man was definitely getting the worst of it. My genteel cough to draw attention to myself went unheard, and eventually I joined in the yelling HELLO CAN I HAVE A COFFEE PLEASE?

Hugging my insipid coffee (nuked in the microwave) I gazed out at the bleak beach, the tide a mere dribble. The mobile ice cream ad seemed completely incongruous – a gloriously grim landscape. Once I’d thawed out, I took some pictures. As I was doing this, the woman from the cafe came past me and sniffed contemptuously.

All Photographs © Rachel Cowan

I confess – this is one of my favourite photos. My fingers froze to the bone while I tried to get exactly what I wanted from what I saw but it was worth it in the end. I was walking home down the hill on a cold night and ahead of me was the cheese shop. The interior, normally quite glacial, must have been sluiced with hot water not long before I arrived, causing a lot of steam.

The colours were worthy of Caravaggio and the way the lighting interacted with the steam was pure theatre. There’s no blur or smudge applied to this picture – this is as was. Never have strings of saucissons looked so good.

This cafe remained dark and silent for many weeks after closing. One evening, I came by and saw these chairs stacked in the window.

Reflections of other buildings and lights across the street made for an interesting added dimension. It was like a movie stage for a film noir – I half expected a homburg-wearing gumshoe, wreathed in cigarette smoke, to emerge from the gloom.

All Photographs © Rachel Cowan

I was out around Princes Street with my Ilford Sporti, a camera from the 1950s. The Sporti was at the cheap end of medium format back then (using 120 roll film). Its controls are basic and this particular camera had a bit of a light leak, which gave the resulting pictures an ethereal edge. It gives 12 square pictures from each roll – and in this case, was loaded with Tri-X, my favourite b&w film.

As I turned onto Waverley Bridge, it seemed to me that the many layers of Edinburgh were laid out in front of me. To my left, a hideous 1970s shopping mall which has never really flourished – Edinburgh Council isn’t famed for the wisdom of its planning decisions. A taxi rank, not over-busy on a chilly, out-of-season January day. Tour buses parked up in a line more in hope than expectation of a crowd of tourists.

Then, down a steep ramp, the Victorian grandeur of Waverley Station. Rising steeply above the valley floor are the towering tenements of the Old Town (high-rise architecture centuries before the term was invented). And above all of them, the spire of the High Kirk of St Giles on the Royal Mile.

There is a truly extraordinary shop in St Stephen Street. I call it the Shop where Nothing is for Sale, because when I was new to the area, I went in and asked how much several items were. The reply to all my questions was It’s not for sale. I’ve since discovered that my experience is by no means unique.

The range of stock defies description. There are old patchwork quilts hanging near the top of the window, strings of beads and brooches draped over jewellery boxes, tiny china animals, miniature vintage toys, battered Dinky vans, and sets of silvered hair brushes to name just a few. The interior is darkly Dickensian and the whole shop is lit by just a few unadorned and feeble lightbulbs.

The shop is owned by a mother and son. The mother, very aged, often sits outside the door on an old bentwood chair, watching the world pass by. The son spends most of his days in one of the local hostelries.

I took this picture on a winter night, when darkness descends before the shops are ready to close. It was a little misty and the light in the window seemed to shine more brightly than usual.

All Photographs © Rachel Cowan

Night brings different challenges for the photographer but also many delights. Stockbridge is on the edge of the New Town and many of its cobbled streets have lovely wrought iron street lanterns.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote about Leerie the Lamplighter, who patrolled the streets lighting these gas lamps, now electrified.

This picture was taken in the winter months in a mews not far from me. The clock tower of St Stephens, only its illuminated face floating above the street, shows the time as ten past eight. A car is parked to the right, tucked into the wall. Doors hung with creeping ivy are deep in the gloom. A Victorian lamp attached to the upper floor of a mews house, where the windows are lit, casts a pool of light on the cobbles.

I’m chasing the moon, trying to include it in the picture – a perfect sphere hanging alongside the clock face of the tower – but it seems I can get either clock or moon in my viewfinder, but not both. Frustrated, I think about giving up. Then quite suddenly (I start a little) a figure steps from the shadows and begins to walk towards me. I can’t make out any details of his appearance and he hasn’t yet seen me. I click the shutter a few times.

The colours of the resulting picture were a mix of greys, browns and blacks – conversion to black and white was an obvious choice.

The man who walked out of the shadows that night is a local – I see him on the street almost daily. He has no idea that he was the crucial element that lifted the photo out the ordinary.

There’s a cut-through from St Stephen Street to Hamilton Place. It starts at the Stockbridge Market arch, goes past the old fruit stores, a row of tenements with pretty gardens and then into this slightly grim underpass area. The authorities and the tag artists wage a constant graffiti war on those blinding white walls.

Of course, it’s a photographer’s dream. That swelling wall to the left is actually the stairwell of the flats above. And at some point, concrete slabs have replaced half of the original cobbles. There’s two exits you can take here – the left is cobbled and the right slabbed. Bright daylight does lovely things in this space and at night, the wall lamps make it positively Hitchcockian.

As I snapped away, happy as Larry, I knew that what I really needed was a person. As a comma to all that blankness. But it had to be the right person. Some chattering teens were the first ones I rejected, then a scowly man with a chocolate labrador (how on earth can any man remain scowly with such an idiotic but adorable dog?). Then out the corner of my eye, I saw this lady. Mercy of mercies, she was a slow walker. Click – right there.

All Photographs © Rachel Cowan