Deep Field arrives with a cover image that stops you cold. A single egg, balanced on a gnarled tree stump in the mouth of a dark cave, with the photographer's shadow visible on the rock face beside it. The title and author name sit in clean white type at the top, the word "Field" bleeding into darkness — and the left edge of the cover is a strip of mint green, a cool accent that makes the whole thing feel designed rather than merely assembled. It is one of the more quietly arresting photography book covers we've seen come through our doors.
Tom Sewell's self-published photography book ranges geographically and tonally across its 136 pages — Arctic icebergs, Atlantic sea stacks, standing stones, ancient oaks, cave interiors glowing amber, a bag of freshly dug potatoes, a peace-sign sticker on a surfboard fin. The edit is wide, and that range is both the book's great strength and a useful prompt for thinking about photography book layout. The juxtaposition of images across the spreads does make for some stunning compositions. Published by Ancient Magic Books.
Deep Field is a large-format photography book that takes its sequencing logic from visual and emotional contrast rather than geography or narrative. Tom Sewell places an ancient oak against a glowing cave interior. A vast turquoise iceberg shares a spread with a close-up of a pebble beach tangled with rope and plastic fragments. A prehistoric standing stone at dusk faces a macro photograph of potatoes in a blue IKEA bag. None of these pairings should work, and all of them do.
The title carries real resonance. Deep field is an astronomical term for observations of the distant universe — images that compress immense timescales and distances into a single frame. Applied to photography of eggs in caves and Arctic ice and coastal debris, it suggests a perspective that is patient, expansive and genuinely interested in the surface texture of the world.
Find more through Ancient Magic Books at ancientmagicbooks.co.uk and @ancientmagic.books.
The format decision here is immediately right. At 270×200mm, Deep Field is close to A4 portrait in feel but slightly narrower — a proportion that suits landscape photography without tipping into oversized coffee-table territory. It is a book that sits well in the hand and opens naturally to a spread without needing to be held flat.
The cover stock is 250gsm uncoated with no lamination — an unusual call that pays off. Without lamination, the cover has the same tactile quality as the inside pages: a slightly soft, paper-forward surface that reinforces the book's considered, unhurried aesthetic. A gloss laminate would have given the cave photograph a commercial sheen that would have worked against the mood entirely.
The mint green strip on the left edge of the cover is a detail that elevates the design considerably. It acts as a visual anchor, separates the cover image from the spine, and reappears as a reference point that makes the book instantly recognisable on a shelf. It's the kind of small, precise touch that distinguishes a well-designed self-published book from one that's simply been printed. Our photobook printing service and guide to photography book printing are good starting points for similar projects.
The full-bleed approach to the interior is consistent and immersive. Every spread runs photography edge to edge, with no white borders or internal margins breaking the flow. The photographs fill the page entirely, which creates an intensity of looking — you are inside each image rather than examining it from a distance.
What saves Deep Field from feeling relentless is the quality of the juxtapositions. The pairings are genuinely unexpected and consistently intelligent. The turquoise iceberg and the pebble beach debris share a surface texture — both are composed of irregular broken fragments, one ancient and geological, one recent and human-made — and the visual rhyme lands even before you process the environmental subtext. The standing stone and the potatoes are deliberately, almost comically, mismatched in scale and significance, but the colour tones tie the page together.
Our team's note: breaking up the full-bleed layout occasionally — a single image on white, a text page, a detail shot — can give readers a visual reset and make those full-bleed moments hit harder by contrast. It's worth considering when planning a book of this length.
The project was produced by Ancient Magic Books, and the print journey was a proper first-timer's education in the technical realities of preparing a 136-page, large-format photography book for press. The early conversations covered bleed settings and their consequences across a large file count, PDF format and file size, and spine widths.
The first files arrived at a significant 9GB — something was clearly wrong with the export settings. Mike identified the issue immediately and guided James through converting to PDF/X-1a format with appropriate compression. The bleed came back black rather than a continuation of the background photography — a common mistake when working in Photoshop rather than InDesign — and James went back through all 136 pages to correct it. That kind of patience and persistence is exactly what a self-published photography book requires.
The books were printed and dispatched within five working days of proof approval, arriving in five boxes to Trebah Garden in Falmouth, Cornwall. Our self-publishing guide and perfect binding set-up guide cover the technical steps in detail.
Consistent full bleed is bold — use it knowingly. A full-bleed layout applied throughout a book creates an immersive, gallery-quality feel. The trade-off is that the reader never gets a visual pause. Vary the mood, scale and tonal weight of spreads to create rhythm.
Use the cover edge as a design element. The mint green spine strip in Deep Field is small but doing real work. A colour edge or a single strong typographic element can make a plain uncoated cover feel polished and considered.
Leave your cover uncoated if the mood calls for it. Matt lamination is not compulsory. An uncoated cover keeps the tactile consistency of the whole book and suits a quiet, contemplative aesthetic far better than a shiny surface would.
Get your bleed right before you multiply it by 136. Working in Photoshop on single pages is a valid approach, but bleed errors are expensive to fix at scale. Before you build all your pages, print a test spread and check the bleed physically.
Convert to PDF/X-1a at the point of export, not after. Export directly to PDF/X-1a from within Photoshop with appropriate compression for files that are press-ready from the start. Our file set-up guide for perfect binding walks through the correct settings.
If you're planning your own photography book, our self-publishing guide and instant quote tool are the right places to start.
