It’s is a five year snapshot of Michael Harris’s life.

The 28-year-old photographer from Nowra set off in 2010 with a new mission - to create a visual memoir of the best landscape shots he had taken on his local and international travels.

“I did this book for myself. I had all these photos sitting around and I wanted something I could look back on,” he said.

“I just wanted something physical I could hold. I still find I flick through it from time to time to revisit those places I’ve been.

“It’s funny because I’ve seen the images a thousand times but they never get old.”

With a love for the outdoors and trekking Michael said he set off into the local wilderness.

“This area in particular and the Shoalhaven in general are absolutely beautiful,” he said.

“I love to shoot landscapes and there is a lot of local stuff in the book that sits alongside other pictures I’ve taken from around the world.

“What I love about the local landscape is a shot I have taken at say, Kiama can sit next to a shot I’ve taken in Colorado and still hold up.”

Harris’s book explores treasured local spots like Drawing Room Rocks, Terara’s farm lands and the stunning coast line as well as the Colorado Desert, the Grand Canyon in the US and villages and lush rainforest in Papua New Guinea such as the Kokoda Track.

“I’ve been lucky to travel and I have seen a lot of stunning places,” he said.

“Some of the places I go camping just to take a photo have been crazy. I’ve spent three to four days camping on a snow-capped mountain, in canyons and over mountains slick with ice.

“The last trip I did through the Blue Mountains, in March this year, I blew my knee out and wrecked my camera attempting to get a photo.

“I got the camera fixed before the knee.”

Harris said he has lived the dream.

“On one of the trips through America I did a six-week road trip exploring as much as I could,” he said.

“The states are very cool. It’s so different to Australia.

“Everything is just on such a grand scale, even the landscape. There are places there that just totally dwarf people and that’s incredible.”

To fund his wild adventures Harris said he put his wedding photography into practice.

“That helped pay for some of my trips. Basically taking photos was funding me to take more photos overseas,” he said.

“I didn’t want to do a lot of that sort of work though because I never want to get to a stage where the fun was sucked out of it.”

The love for photography started aged 15.

“I just picked up a camera and started taking photos.”

Harris said the book was also a way to build a portfolio.

“So I started to condense everything into a book,” he said.

But, picking the right photos was tricky.

“There were so many beautiful shots. I had built up quite a backlog of photos,” he said.

“In the end I had around 200 photos I couldn’t choose from and I culled that to 55.

“Where do I go from here?”

Harris said the next direction was another book that showcased the Shoalhaven.

“I want to show people areas around here they may have never seen before,” he said.

“There are so many great secret spots people don’t know about, but what I also really enjoy doing is taking photos of something everyone has seen in a way they may not have seen it.

“I think it would definitely surprise people when they realise the diversity of our landscape we have right here.”