Nowadays, Edinburgh is up there as being one of the most photographed places on the planet, but there was a time when the very notion of capturing the capital's likeness using a wee black box would've seen you dooked in the Nor' Loch and tried for sorcery.
That all changed in the late 1830s, when one local man began experimenting with early photography processes right here in Edinburgh from the window of his flat off the Royal Mile.
Dating from around 1839 is a Daguerrotype that shows Edinburgh city centre, including landmarks that are still familiar to us today.
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Thomas Davidson, the man behind the history-making image, had become fascinated by pioneers such as Thomas Talbot and Louis Daguerre who had been exhibiting their ground-breaking work around Europe.
Favouring the Daguerrotype, which was the first photographic process to become publicly-available, Thomas Davidson pointed his rudimentary lens in a north-easterly direction from his residence towards the North Bridge, Calton Jail and the monuments of Calton Hill.
Contained inside his camera was a highly-polished copper sheet, plated in silver, and thinly-coated in special chemicals that were sensitive to light.
Created within three years of Queen Victoria taking to the throne, Davidson's image is believed to be the earliest permanent photograph of the capital's city centre ever produced. To the people of Edinburgh, who had only ever seen the likeness of their city portrayed in oil paintings and engravings, this must have been a revolutionary moment.
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Davidson played a hugely-important role in the early development of photography in Edinburgh. In the 1840s, he would continue to take images, while also building his own equipment, which he supplied to other local pioneers in the field, including David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson.
From a historical point of view, Davidson's 1839 image is of great importance, not just for the early date which it was created, but for the fact that it shows a part of Edinburgh that would soon be vastly altered.
Much of the foreground of the image is filled with buildings, including the ancient Trinity College Church, which was founded in 1460 by Mary of Gueldres, consort to James II. Considered the finest example of Gothic architecture in Edinburgh, the church lay in the valley now occupied by the east end of Waverley Station between modern-day Calton Road and Jeffrey Street.
In 1848 the North British Railway Company purchased the site in order to expand Waverley Station. The plans sadly involved the removal of all original buildings including the historic Trinity College Church.
The original North Bridge, built in the 1770s and replaced by the current bridge in 1896, can also be clearly made out, along with the long-since vanished Calton Jail, which was demolished in the 1930s.
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