The book of Ben's sea

Every now and then you get a present that has you turning your head away pretending an insect has just flown into your eye. Such was the case with 'The book of Ben's sea'.

The book was compiled my close friend Sergio Oca. He took the time to trawl back through this blog looking for decent pics of the sea. He then straightened them, adjusted the colour and the contrast and generally made the photos presentable before arranging them all in book form.


Sergio works as the creative director of an advertising agency in Barcelona but at heart he’s a musician and an artist. He has compiled the book with great sensitivity but more than that he’s let the musician in him guide his hand and the book ‘reads’ with the rhythm of a song.


For a long time I’ve felt I should organise my photos of the sea (and of the children for that matter) but I just don’t have the stamina in front of the screen for that sort of thing. So I’m doubly grateful to Sergio for producing this book and for reminding me of my relationship with the sea which he sums up with this Conrad quote on the flyleaf.

I have attempted here to lay bare with the unreserve of a last hour's confession the terms of my relation with the sea, which beginning mysteriously, like any great passion the inscrutable Gods send to mortals, went on unreasoning and invincible, surviving the test of disillusion, defying the disenchantment that lurks in every day of a strenuous life; went on full of love's delight and love's anguish,
facing them in open-eyed exultation, without bitterness and without repining, from the first hour to the last.
The Mirror of the Sea.