My latest ‘book’ available as a PDF or hard copy from Blurb is Southwark & Bermondsey, a slightly thinner volume than some, but still with decent-sized reproductions of around 70 black and white pictures. Many are of tallish buildings and in portrait format and often I’ve chosen to put two side by side on a page. There is a reasonably large sample of the work in the preview:
The PDF version has ISBN 978-1-909363-11-3 but I am not really publishing the print version – frankly Blurb is really too expensive to expect people to buy copies. And although the print quality on lustre paper is pretty good, on any decent screen the PDF is better. I wrote a little about my ideas on the future of photographic publishing here in Books to Go! last September.
Buyers of the PDF version also get a licence to print a single copy of all or any part of the work for their own private use. But apart from quality, the big difference is price. Currently from Blurb the roughly 60 page softback book costs £30.35 with delivery around a fiver extra, while the PDF is £4.49. I’ve set the prices so I make exactly the same on either. Alternatively you can buy directly from me – details here.
The pictures were taken on a number of walks through the area over a ten year period, but there were many parts I only visited in the later part of the period from 1974-84. Some of the buildings I photographed remain, though often more as façades or pastiches of the original. I wince every time I go down Shad Thames, but there are other parts which have been more kindly treated.
It’s around nine months since I last produced a book, The Deserted Royals, which is also officially published now, and is also published as a PDF – with the option of a print version. I’d intended to bring out a book every couple of months, but events have rather got in my way.
It takes rather longer to produce these works partly because of the condition of some of the negatives, some of which have required extensive retouching because of insect damage to the negatives. Although I’ve put in a lot of work on this, there are still some visible signs on a few of the images in Southwark & Bermondsey, though fortunately in important subject areas. It’s usually skies that are the hardest parts to get entirely correct.