Well over a year ago now, my good friend Matt from Stride Studio sent me a link to a project being run for GF Smith, that was looking to crowd source a set of images for their new paper sample book, the Fine Collection. The idea was really simple, upload some images to collaboratewith.gfsmith.com, and they will pick a series to be featured on the pages of the book, to showcase how good the set of papers used are for photographic output.

Now I’m pretty pessimistic with things like this, but as I love the sample books GF Smith do, and always wanted to be featured in one. I picked six of my favorite images and uploaded them.

I’m so glad I did though. While I was asked for 3 of the images in high res, about three months after submission, I then didn’t hear anything about the project from GF Smith or their designers. Even the guys on the GF Smith stand at the Photography Show didn’t know anything about the project. So I resigned to thinking that I hadn’t made the final cut.

That was until an email landed in my inbox the other day, from someone asking me about this image of mine they had seen in the Fine Collection. I replied back asking which image it was, but also called GF Smith to see if I could get a copy.

The book arrived yesterday and I couldn’t be happier to see that I am actually featured in it (I’ve had a lot of work miss-credited to me recently!). A definite career highlight so far and little dream come true.

This is the image they chose, it’s one I shot on large format film back in 2011. The room was a renovated workshop, belonging to the estates dept. at the Royal Hospital here in Liverpool. It’s been one of my favorites for a long time, with everything being white or light grey and the room so empty. I’d imagine now its filled with racks of shelves and covered in paint as it was supposed to be a paint store.

It’s so good to see this image along side the 65 other brilliant works. It’s even more amazing for me that I was selected from over ten thousand other submissions.
The designers have sequenced the images by color which I think works great, and is a nod to the tradition of doing that with sample books for things like ink and paint, as well as some of the older GF Smith books.

I’ve picked out below some of my favorite spreads, as well as my image along side a great shot of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin by Matt Adams. Plus there is a brilliant cat pic on the cover by Elias Fecher, everyone loves a good cat pic.

So so happy.