For five years, North Laine Photography has been collating images of the many weird and wonderful aspects of Brighton life in its calendar.

Launched as the product of a competition which invited people to submit pictures they felt summed up the essence of the city, the calendar was a huge hit and has gone on to become an annual must-have for residents and visitors alike.

But even managing director Nigel Swallow wasn’t prepared for the outcry when he announced this year’s calendar would be the last.

“Just this morning, I had a call from someone in Bulgaria complaining about it,” he says, “and that’s not to mention all the emails we’ve had and people coming into the gallery moaning about it.”

After so many years at the helm of the business, Nigel, whose sister Daryl is the director of NLP’s gallery, now wants to take a back seat to pursue personal projects. That means passing the baton on to other people.

“I’m a photographer and I don’t consider myself a business person. I only ever intended to give it a go for four or five years,” he explains. “Because of the commitment needed to run a small business, I’m not getting as much time to take my own photographs and I want to pull away from commercial work to do other things.”

The calendar has always benefited from its wide range of contributors, which includes big names such as Roger Bamber and Brighton favourite LomoKev as well as lesser-known talents sourced from websites such as Flickr.

It has also helped boost the profile of rising stars such as Dark Daze, formerly studio manager for NLP, who has now set up his own studios just around the corner from NLP’s gallery.

Nigel hopes, with this wealth of support, the calendar will be able to continue, if under a different guise.

“It’s touching that people love it so much and are upset at the news, but I think having new people taking it on is really exciting,” Nigel says. “People get bored and they want something fresh – I think the others will do something interesting and new with it.”

While images of the piers always feature (“You can’t have a Brighton calendar without them!” says Nigel) the calendar is known for celebrating less picture-postcard aspects of the local scenery.

This year’s star is arguably rogue seagull Henry, captured in a series of pictures pinching people’s food and, in one comical shot, in silhouette, waiting to swoop outside a fast food outlet. “He’s one of my favourites,” laughs Nigel. “I just couldn’t believe it was the same seagull behind all those incidents.

“This year, we put all of our favourites for the calendar up on the wall in the gallery and then asked the public what they wanted. Henry was massively popular.”

In a city as colourful and creative as Brighton, Nigel has never been short of images to choose from. He struggles to remember all those he has enjoyed publishing over the years. “You couldn’t ask for a better place to do something like this,” he says.

“It’s been great.”

  • The North Laine Photography Gallery calendar is on sale now at the gallery, above Snoopers Paradise, in Kensington Gardens, online from www.brightonphotography.com and in shops including Borders in Churchill Square, City Books in Hove, Kemp Town Books and the Pavilion gift shop. For more information, call the gallery on 01273 628794.