A photographer who has captured Macclesfield in some of its best lights is exhibiting his works of art for the first time.

Mark Helliwell, 48, of Manor Crescent in Tytherington, has snapped dozens of photographs across the town to form the collection 'Making Macclesfield Beautiful'.

Now the amateur photographer, who is a communications manager at AstraZeneca in Alderley Park, is exhibiting them at Macclesfield Library to share with everyone the good side of the town and its surrounding countryside.

Mark, who is a member of Macclesfield Photographic Society, said: “Some of the challenges that (the society) gave us was photographing local scenes and I started thinking widely and trying to capture different aspects of the town.

“A lot of areas aren't as attractive as others, there's lots of empty shops with for sale signs and I decided I was going to try and capture the positive side and it just snowballed.

“I wanted to look at the good in Macclesfield and thought 'what better way?'.

“Macc gets a lot of negativity from being ugly or run down.

“I wanted to show that there are many pockets of Macclesfield and beyond that are beautiful and are a reason for people to come and visit the town more often and experience what it has to offer.”

He added: “The camera never sees what the eye sees, your eye gets much bigger range of brightness than the camera, so when you start processing the pictures on the computer that's what I aim to do, to capture what I saw when I took the picture rather than what the camera saw.”

Mark, who lives with wife Jenny and children Rachel, 15, and Joe, 12, has been taking pictures for the past 20 years and more recently joined the ranks of Macclesfield Photographic Society where he has honed his skills.

He said: “Macclesfield is such a fantastic location because it's so close to the hills.

There are such great view points all around. I've had really positive feedback, it's nice to look at things in a positive light.”

The exhibition will be held upstairs at the library between December 16 and January 17, 2014 and will be open for viewing when the library is open.

markhelliwell.com/exhibition-making-macclesfield-look-beautiful