Mike Blabac was always on my photographer radar if I ever needed to name one of my favourites. When I heard that PowerHouse were releasing a book of his work, I knew immediately that this would be a definite purchase. I tried to work the angles to get a review copy through, but ultimately it was my man Ray who came through for me by grabbing me a copy at the book launch night in London. I wasn’t keen on Amazon’s ‘6-8 week’ delivery projection.

The first thing to note is the weight and size of the book: it’s really not a ‘pop it in your backpack’ type of deal and truly deserves a key spot on the coffee table. 224 pages deep, with a hardback cover and bold black sleeve means that it’s going to be hard to ignore. Whilst the nicely composed pages of text that break the book into rough chapters are really nice, it’s the presentation of Blabac’s photos that make this such an epic release. All of the major image highlights get the deserved full bleed page treatment, but there’s some nice slide and contact sheet presentation pages as well. Stevie Williams holding a manual perfectly still for a DC shoot? Check. Josh Kalis launching a freshly caught tre over a bin? Check. Danny Way flying over the Mega Ramp? Check-check-check: all the boxes are ticked in this one.

Whilst I recognised a lot of the photos from past magazines, it’s great to be reminded how amazing some of them are. One of my favourite photos of all-time is included, which is the shot of Bobby Puleo and Brad Staba rolling through Union Square in SF back in 1996, disturbing a flock of pigeons. The shot of Scott Johnston doing a backside smith behind the parking meter is another photo that was pinned on my walls for a while.

As I flicked through the book, I noticed that a lot of the photos didn’t have captions, which was fine for most of the pages (as I could usually work out who it was skating), but frustrating on others. Needless to say, I had jumped the gun: everything’s taken care of properly with a nicely laid-out index/caption section at the back of the book, with little stories and info about each shoot. Absolutely flawless.

It’ll cost you in the region of £30 to own this book, but it’s well worth it. Check out all the info over at the special section on the DC site right now.