As a keen photographer, David Critchlow was delighted with the response to an exhibition of his images.

The fact that the photos had been hidden away for almost 50 years made made the event's success even more rewarding.

Furthermore, it inspired David, who is now in his 80s, to hunt for more of his photos - which he continued to find in various boxes, tucked away in old corners of the house.

"I found more as time went on, that I had moved from one place to another," explains David, who lives in Westbourne.

David had printed off copies of some of the photos in the exhibition, which was held at Gallery 65 in Westbourne in the summer of 2015, to send to his brother, who said that he must produce a book of the pictures.

A keen photographer from a young age, David began taking photos when he visited Paris with his family in the early 1950s. The pictures were put away in a portfolio and were not discovered again until many years later.

"I found these photos and thought it would be nice if I could get them onto my computer," he says.

"I went to Gallery 65 and they said they knew someone who could help. That was a lady called Emma van Lindholm. When she saw them she got quite excited about them and said I must get them enlarged and put on an exhibition."

Only around a dozen images were featured in the exhibition, but the event inspired David to seek out more of his photos - with more than 60 now featuring in his self-published book, simply called Photographs.

The images, which are all in black and white, are predominantly street scenes and architecture from around France, Italy and England - David's approach to photography has always been to see people in their own settings, ideally without them being aware of his presence.

"They were taken with my father’s camera to begin with. I started taking my own pictures with my own camera, a box Brownie, given as a birthday present in 1939.

"My early essays in real photography were in the late 1940s and early 1950s when my parents and I regularly visited Paris," said David, who has since travelled widely in Europe, South Asia and Australasia, sponsoring a school for orphans in Nepal, raising money and recruiting sponsors, as well as taking clothes and other materials out to Kathmandu, where many of his later pictures were taken.

David learnt how to develop film and print in his father’s darkroom and soon upgraded to a second-hand Super Ikonta of his own, which gave 16 pictures on a 120 film – double that of his father’s camera.

It was this he used to take the pictures in Paris, between 1952 and 1955. David progressed to a 35mm Pentax SLR on which he took his first colour pictures and, on retiring from his job as an architect in 1997, bought first a Sony and then a Canon digital camera with zoom lenses.

While the publication of the book was a personal project - and a chance to compete with his brother, who has produced a number of books as the professor of architecture at the Prince of Wales Institute of Archaeology - David sees it as a real achievement.

"It probably took about 12 months to put together because I kept finding more pictures," he smiles.

"It was a personal thing, but it's on Amazon now and in The Westbourne Bookshop and The Wimborne Bookshop. The chap in The Westbourne Bookshop said they had never sold any self-published books, but they've sold five already."