Bit of an on and off one is this project. I’ve slowly been going through my archives for photos for a book, but am still trying to find a balance between urban exploration photos and industrial / urban landscapes. I don’t want it to be a mix of both, but getting the balance and the ‘flow’ of images is proving to be a right bloody headache (all black and white? or a couple of colour? what layout? one per page? etc, etc) but I suppose that’s the thing with self publishing, you’re the editor / producer / photographer and customer.

My idea was that this would in some respects be a retrospective of the least few years as I will shortly become a father and don’t envisage having the time on my hands to be out galivanting round derelict buildings and other such nonsense! As such I want to achieve a balance of images. although there are quite a few books of urban exploration photos around (mainly on Blurb), and one or two of industrial landscapes, there’s nothing that covers both, the most inspiration I’ve got so far is from a book called ‘Shadows of Change’ by Leigh Preston. Leigh is quite well known as a black and white photographer in camera club circles and someone once compared my work to his. As I’d never seen any of his stuff, I tracked down a copy of his book and indeed there are parallels between what I do, and what he was doing 25 years ago.

Ultimately this book will be for me, and if anyone wants to buy a copy on Blurb they can do. My target for completion is sometime this year, as I’ll probably run out of time to visit any more sites in July, and I’ll have to squeeze in completing the book between nappy changing and going to work!

Sample pdf: http://www.theviewfromthenorth.org/files/4565/transientlandscapes.pdf

(Originally I was going to call it Transient Landscapes, but I went off that idea and came up with Mechanical Landscapes as it seemed much more appropriate.)