Looking up from the desk where I spend rather too much time typing on a computer keyboard, I can see the embryonic stages of a new skyscraper starting to rise up over London.

To be honest, I can’t actually see a single bit of the skyscraper, but I can see the cranes that have just gone up on the site next to Guys Hospital – and over the next few years I should be able to watch the structure itself rise up out of the ground and slowly come to dominate the view from my living room.

Taking my cue from a series of photos of the Olympic Stadium taken by Diamond Geezer, I am today starting my own photo time-line of The Shard being built.

Subject to still living in the same flat over the next few years, I should build up a series of photos of The Shard as seen from the Canary Wharf area.

I am not expecting anything noticeable until January at the earliest, but will follow the “language of the cranes” on the skyline over the next few months regardless.

Eventually, we should get something not too dissimilar to this: