Wild Derbyshire

Wild Derbyshire is a hardback book of 172 pages by Paul Hobson celebrating the beauty and diversity of Derbyshire's amazing wildlife published in September 2012.

The RRP is £25 and it is still available from many bookshops, such as Chatsworth. Unfortunately I have now sold out and so web sales have stopped.

I have long pondered the idea of producing a book about Derbyshire’s amazing wildlife but to actually get it to print has been a long learning curve. I had always wanted to produce a book and I finally bit the proverbial bullet two years ago when I started to work almost exclusively on this project.

I had debated whether I would work via a publisher or entirely on my own. I had some rough ideas about how I wanted the final book to look and with extensive research and chats with friends decided that it was realistic to actually do the majority of the work myself.

The part that gave me the most worries was using the design programme. It didn’t seem intuitive at first and I was having real nightmares that I might be making some huge critical mistakes that would only show up when the books arrived, all 1500 of them. However, with hindsight it was not too difficult once I got some advice and got stuck in.

The contents of any book are critical. I wanted a book that displayed my work well, showcased the stunning wildlife of Derbyshire yet could still inform, even for those who know the county well. I also wanted a personal angle so I decided to showcase nine individuals from widely different walks of life who all have a passion for Derbyshire’s wildlife. I chose two farmers, a gamekeeper, an artist, a forester, a river bailiff, a Derbyshire Wildlife Trust volunteer, a NT land manager and Nick Moyes of Derby City peregrines fame.

Most of the photography was fairly straightforward but I wanted to have a few images taken from the air. I was not sure how to go about this. However, a phone call to a Derbyshire microlite airfield soon set me up. I can’t say the photography was that enjoyable but the experience of seeing the Derbyshire Dales from above was amazing.