What I love about photography is the way it can lead you to places and eventually pictures you never planned until you arrive there and then of course you claim it was your stated intention to go there all along.

Yesterday, with my photo jaunt to Derbyshire almost complete, we arrived in the valley where the industrial revolution really took off – now a World Heritage site, the  mill of industrialist Richard Arkwright. To be honest, my mind was focused on lunch rather than heritage when I arrived in the town of Cromford – it is now lovingly undergoing restoration by a dedicated group of volunteers. Obviously, once there, I had to take a photo for myself, so I then spent an enjoyable  30 minutes looking for an angle which portrayed the industrial mood of the Mill. Mills were by all accounts grim places to work, so I was determined to use the shadow to help bring some darkness to the image  - whilst excluding the many safety barriers and other construction at the location. The trade-off between losing my lunch break and producing this image was, I think, worth it.

So how important was Arkwright’s entrepreneurial genius and what is his legacy? Well, materialistically, the fact that I took this photo on a camera made in Asia, whilst wearing a T-shirt made in China and purchased in South Africa, then posted the photo on a laptop made in America, is in no part down to the mass mechanical  production line techniques first introduced in Cromford. The social implications of this cycle of change that Arkwright ignited, for better or worse, are even greater.