The most important part of any book is the cover. No matter how terrifying the thriller, how marvellous the mystery, the reader has to be invited in first of all.
A new book about the world’s favourite Saturday morning pastime, parkrun, has just been published and the cover photo is the talk of the running world.
It’s a striking picture, loosely based on the famous evolution of mankind image, featuring four runners on a beach below sand-dunes.
But look again. There’s actually just two runners, twice, husband and wife team Laura and Dave McGuigan close to the route of one of their favourite parkruns at Woolacombe Dunes in Devon.
And the photographer is…Laura.
She’s developed a style that she calls bespoke movement imagery, which combines multi-exposure and chronophotography techniques, and has applied it so far to a series of joyfully presented books about not just running but moving, happily, freely and playfully.
Laura and Dave have developed a philosophy of living based on everyday adventure, and have been encouraging us all to revert to more child-like ways of enjoying the outdoors.
They call it an adventure into the world of natural human movement, encouraging readers to “marvel at the sense of joy and contentment you can attain simply by moving your body in the ways it was made to move, in settings it was made to move in”.
There’s a new website, http://everydayadventurous.com/ through which Laura and Dave aim to encourage anyone who loves to spend time moving around outdoors in nature to rethink and redesign their lives, so they can get out more and make the absolute most of it.
Laura is currently putting the finishing touches to a series of video tutorials to show others how to make pictures like hers and she’ll be inviting people to send in their own photos from which she will create bespoke works of movement art just for them.
Meanwhile, the four books she and Dave produced in the Adventures For Adults series have been combined into Move Forever to provide an entire year of guided movement adventures. There’s more than 250 images to inspire readers to get out and get moving more adventurously; all you’ll need to do, they say, is keep the momentum going once you’re out there.
The cover for How parkrun changed our lives was a collaborative effort, beginning with an idea from David Burnip, the son of the book’s author Eileen Jones. His picture was used as the basis for Laura’s photo, which in turn was created into the stunning book cover by designer Ellen Longhorn.
Move Forever is available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Move-Forever-adventurously-lifetime-adventures-ebook/dp/B08V9DJHZL/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=move+forever&qid=1615032940&s=digital-text&sr=1-1
How parkrun changed our lives is published by Gritstone, £9.99 https://www.amazon.co.uk/how-parkrun-changed-our-lives/dp/1913625036/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1T7IV6Q9ZRH5U&dchild=1&keywords=how+parkrun+changed+our+lives&qid=1615033062&sprefix=how+parkrun%2Cdigital-text%2C157&sr=8-1
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