The early year tour of mills in monochrome, came to a shuddering halt when I was approached by a PR company to do an urbex style shoot using the new Samsung Galaxy S7.

London Road Fire Station in Manchester was the first location, a magnificent late Victorian building that was last used in the 90’s, but had closed as a fire station some time before that. It’s been empty and decaying ever since, but has recently been bought for renovation.

What was intended to be a one day shoot encompassing two sites in Manchester and London became a two day shoot of 5 sites. Having spent the morning at London Road, we hurtled down to London on the train to the next location but unfortunately redevelopment work was underway and the place was a building site, so there were no usable photographs from here.

I returned to London at the end of the week to photograph 3 more places – St.Clements Asylum, Caroline Gardens Chapel, and Crossness Pumping Station.

A most rewarding exercise both photographically (seeing some places I’d never have seen otherwise, at someone else’s expense) and financially (it funded a new camera!). It was also likely a once in a lifetime opportunity – how many more offers am I likely to get, to get paid to shoot my favourite subjects…..?!?!