Forget all the books that have been written about historic Southampton, two local men have recently published a book highlighting how the city is today...

THERE are many books about old Southampton, but until now there hasn't been a book about Southampton as it is today.

That's where local photographer Neville Stanikk and author Barry Miles come in. They've produced a full colour hardback book of photographs of the city as it is in 2000 - Southampton - Portrait of a Maritime City.

Neville Stanikk, 43, is the studio manager of HHC Lewis, an advertising agency in the city. He spends most of his spare time photographing the landscape, both urban and rural, and over the past nine months he has shot thousands of pictures in and around the city in order to arrive at the final 140 that the book contains.

Neville says: "We took our cue for the structure of the book from the Southampton City Council logo and hence the book is divided into four sections: Water, featuring the docks, shoreline and rivers; green, focusing on the city's trees, parks and commons; old, showing Southampton's rich heritage of old buildings; and new, making sure we showed Southampton's modern side, especially now that the WestQuay development is complete.''

Barry Miles, 42, who has written the commentary, is an acclaimed painter in watercolours, a publisher of photographic greetings cards of the area and the author of a book on watercolourist Edward Wesson.

The instigator of the book, he says: "I've always been interested in art and history, and it has long seemed a shame to me that there wasn't a good book on Southampton that visitors or students, or locals who wanted to show someone else what their city looked like, could buy.

"After all, with a city changing as fast as Southampton, this book, I'm sure, will soon become a collector's item and will provide a unique record of how the city looked at the beginning of a new millennium.''

All the photographs were shot on a Nikon F4, on 35mm Fuji Velvia, with a variety of lenses. "I like the light of early morning and evening, but that means low light levels and hence everything was shot with the camera on a tripod and using exposures of up to five minutes. A lot of my time was spent waiting for roads and streets to be completely clear in both directions. Often people would stop in front of the camera and watch me, wondering why I didn't take a picture, without realising that they were the reason I couldn't.''

During his nine months of pounding the city streets, Neville certainly encountered some of the more colourful of the city's inhabitants and visitors: "I met of group of Newcastle football supporters who all thought it was a great laugh to bare their backsides and 'moon' not just me but everyone else in the busy LeisureWorld car park! I met a woman who offered to climb the Bitterne Triangle clock tower naked; some lads who insisted I was a paedophile for photographing the Skandia building; and even a lady in Southampton Cemetery who told me that she'd spoken to the pixies there and they'd told her that all the people who could do magic - the Celts, the Jews and the Brownies - all lived in the tunnels that connected the Cemetery to the General Hospital!''

For both Neville and Barry, producing this book has been quite an education. "Not only did I learn a lot more about somewhere that I thought I knew pretty well, but every week Neville would show me not only pictures of locations I had sent him to but places he had discovered that I never knew existed!'' says Barry.

Neville adds: "I've lived here for 16 years but until I got going on Barry's schedules of places he thought we should photograph for this book, I'd never heard of the Old Bowling Green, Britain's oldest, dating back to 1299, or the lovely little church at South Stoneham. I'd certainly never wandered round Highfield - something which I now recommend to everyone - or noticed all the varied and interesting buildings at the university.

"I made up my mind when I started, to show everything in as flattering a light as possible because I hope more people will appreciate the sights that they know, maybe go and see those that they don't and, hopefully, feel proud of them all. Certainly, judging from my pictures, the sun always shines from a blue sky in Southampton!''

* Southampton - Portrait of a Maritime City, by Neville Stanikk and Barry Miles, is published by Halsgrove at £16.95.