On Writing

I have always loved photography and the post processing of photos, and have produced one or two photo books in the last couple of years. The spark was lit years ago, when I was very impressed by a photo book a client had brought in to the office to show me. At that time, those sort of books were a fairly new concept, however when I produced my own, I was disappointed with the quality and how dark the photos looked. A year or so after that, I used to create a yearly small, soft cover photo book via a function on my computer which were much better quality, but there was no provision for creating your own layouts or designs; you simply followed pre-set templates. They ultimately went on the bookshelf and I promptly forgot about them. About a decade later, I came across them again, but I wasn’t impressed and consigned them to the recycling bin.

In late 2019, a photographer we used to watch on You Tube talked about producing a photobook. That piqued my latent interest, so I had a look at the website and realised just how far things had moved on. You could produce, publish and even sell a really professional looking book while letting your creativity run wild.

There was just so much choice. A range of different sizes with either hard covers, soft covers or dust jackets, layflat photo books, magazines, small information booklets or large coffee table books. You could choose the number of pages, the paper quality, the background colours, the layout and print options. You could use their templates, or do it entirely your own way. The possibilities for creativity and design seemed endless.

I couldn't wait to get started. A simple download of some software took a few minutes, then all I had to do was choose the style of book. I thought I'd start with a small, soft cover 7 x 5 inch booklet of about 25 pages. I then realised (and I confess, I hadn't even thought about this) that I could add text boxes and actually write a little book.... I watched one or two of the tutorial videos on how to get started, and then off I went.

I thought I'd turn some of my blogs into a small books, and each blog proved to be just about the right length to have a full page of text and a full colour photo on the opposite page. I did 12 small books in the end, making a folio box to keep them in which I was quite pleased with.

Bro and I then decided to produce a large format, coffee table style book using a selection of our favourite Lake District pictures possibly with a view to selling it. We took a great deal of time and care choosing the best photos, the paper quality and the layout. It ended up as a large 90 page book with the slightly lustrous pages showing off our photographs beautifully. I didn't really write very much text as we were trying to make it more about the photography, so it just had one or two pertinent lines on each page. We were really delighted with the results and went on to do a second volume a year or so later, following exactly the same layout and style as the first.

During lockdown, we had the idea of actually writing a book about our Wainwright climbing experiences, and I really relished the challenge, especially as it would be a good memory jogger for the future. It took a long time as we were going back nearly 13 years, trying to get the timelines right, choose the photos, decide which fells to mention and wrack our brains as to anything interesting or funny that had happened, but we soon had quite a substantial book with which we were delighted. I revised it the following year, changing some of the photos and  taking time to expand and increase certain chapters, adding around an additional 25 pages, but in the end, we felt it was as comprehensive as it could be and we were really pleased.

Once I'd finished that book, I was keen to do another as my love of writing was really growing. I thought I’d combine all my small 7x5 booklets into one hardback book, in the same format as before, and it became a lovely way for me to spend an hour or two every so often through lockdown. Once that was finished, I decided to combine all my blogs into another book of the same format, especially as I anticipated deleting my website at some point in the future.

Next, I decided to tackle what is still a big part of my life, my travels, and this really was a labour of love. Firstly, I had over 30 years to pick through, and then, as I've been to over 85 countries, remembering each trip really was a test of memory. Secondly, a lot of my photos from those early trips were not digital and not always the best quality. This involved a lot of hunting through hard to get to photo albums and lots of scanning and editing. That book probably took me the longest to complete up to that point, but it brings back a lot of fantastic memories.

After lockdown, I wrote about my observations in nature whilst out and about during my year and a half on furlough, and I'm particularly proud of how that turned out. However, much as I loved writing these books, I didn't really want an entire shelf full of my own titles, so during 2022 I spent some time revising one or two of those I'd already produced, just to try and get them as perfect as I could. 

Whilst we were writing our Wainwright walking book, we did get a bit tired of constantly having to log on to laptops or computers, of trawling through hundreds and hundreds of photos, of scanning through websites trying to identify summit cairns, or wracking our brains  to remember one or two small details. Bro sighed one day and said ‘this is ridiculous. We just need all this information in one place with a picture of each summit so we can look at it whenever we want without doing all this. Why don't you write a book like that?’ 

That seemed like a good, albeit slightly daunting, idea. We decided each photo would be a simple summit shot with a few notes about the routes we took, the weather and anything memorable that happened. It took me about three months to write and probably another month to sort out all the photos, which really was an effort as some, in fact most, of our early photos hadn’t been labelled, so we spent immeasurable time trying to identify piles of stones! Now that it's finished at 240 pages long, we have a wonderful reference guide to dip into and jog our memories without having to involve any technology. 

I have one last book I'm working on, and it will be the same format as our Wainwright memory book, but for the Outlying fells. It's an ongoing project at the moment, as we still have half of them left to climb, but we now have a small, satisfying pile of books to dip in and out of, which we’ve really enjoyed producing and which remind us of so many wonderful, happy times.