Here is my selected collection of photographs from my weekend of hiking on Dartmoor. The event was to fundraise money for South Dartmoor Community College, my old secondary school who I continue to support with outdoor education volunteering. The Ten Tors event holds a strong point in my life as for the past 4 years I have been involved in the event in one way or another. The event is not just about the one weekend of hiking in May, the whole experience is built around six month of training so you begin to know Dartmoor like the back of your hand.
This was very much a personal journey of exploration across the Moors as I was joined with my girlfriend Mary, My mum and her Partner Pete. Being out there with my family is something that I don’t do that often so experiencing those moments with the people that I love was a rather special experience.
The walk went well and the weather was not too bad for us. Compared to the few days when I shot “Ocean Path” where I was having to put my camera away every 10 minutes when the heavens opened, I was able to have my camera out for the majority of the walk and capture all the moments. As I was walking with a group of people, I was able to capture them, their interactions within the land and each other. This series of photographs is a collection of landscapes, portraits and images of us moving through the land which conjure the narrative of our journey through the land.
From the 560 photographs that I shot over the weekend, I cut that down to 150 and then the final 30 that I will go onto and create a Zine with. These photographs will also sit alongside a cinematic piece that I am yet to make which will be a moving narrative with drone footage of us travelling through the land. Having the two narratives side by side will showcase the size, beauty and omnipotence of the land and our relationship with it. I want my viewer to feel as if they are immersing themselves in the landscape as we did for the two day hike.
For all of my images I went through a 3 stage editing process. The first being the selection from all of the photographs that I took. I then moved into the first edit where I made slight adjustments with the contrast, shadows, highlights and tone. I then created a preset with those adjustments and moved through all of my photographs placing it onto them. The final process that I went through was selecting the images that I am then going to make a zine with. I selected the images in chronological order and chose the ones that I felt best told the narrative of us moving through the land.
This image above is an example of this process and you can see that I did not edit the photographs that much in post. The most noticeable difference in this image and the series is that I brought the white balance down to cool the image and neutralise the colours. I did this to keep coherency with the way in which I edited “Ocean Path” as they are going to sit next to each other in a bigger body of work “Grounded Routes” (I will go into more detail about this further on in my blog). I felt like this was an important edit to make especially in my portraits so that the skin tones were accurate and not too yellow. Keeping the edit as close to the original image as possible was important because I want the viewer to feel close to the moments that I was in while pressing the shutter button.
This image of Mary shows us moving through the land. When you hike across the Moors you are rarely following paths and most commonly following your compass to certain features on the map. Finding these features enables you to know where you are on the map which obviously stops you from getting lost and keeps you on your route. When shooting over the weekend, I did not direct the people that I was with when taking their photographs (apart from some of the formal portraits) which keeps the natural moments. Throughout the hike we were walking in and out of mist which adds a difficulty to travelling across the Moors when you cannot see ten feet in front of you. This image shows the mist and photographically isolates the subject and confines the viewer’s attention to Mary and the small amount of land that is in the foreground of the photograph. This image represents the difficulties of Dartmoor, the mist and poor visibility indicates the refined navigation that is needed to find our way through the mist. While Mary’s damp facial expression of slight worry suggests to the viewer the mood that we were in while travelling through this section of the Moor.
Alongside my portrait’s I am displaying landscape photographs of Dartmoor and people moving through it. This photograph shows another group of people hiking across the moors which indicates the perspective of the Land compared to the size of us travelling through it. The editing process of my landscape photographs is exactly the same as for my portraits which allow a coherent series of images to sit alongside each other. As I have mentioned before, this gives the narrative context of the size and perspective of the space that we are travelling through. This photograph represents the wider narrative regarding the omnipotence of the land and how it is far greater than us.
The editing process for my landscape photographs is much the same as for my portraits. This coherent process meant for me to turn down the white balance to cool the photograph and bring out the shadows in order to see the detail of the land throughout the foreground, midground and background of the image. Something that has not been mentioned about my editing process is that I place a 4x5 crop on all of my images. The ratio of this frame allows for a confined composition, allowing me to to focus the viewer's attention on the subject and narrative of my photographs.
This is the only photograph in my series that shows the size of the land against the small black dots which are humans walking through it. For the first moment the viewer may have to focus in on the centre of the image in order to work out that those black dots are in fact hikers walking along the contours of the land. This reinforces the ideas and philosophies that are built around the creation of my landscape work. The land is controlling the path for the hikers, as well as bearing over them in the distance, informing the viewer that the land has the power to control how we travel through it. This still image also captures a moment of silence between the land and the hikers, a moment when the viewer cannot see the interaction the walkers are having, it is just them and the land with no interferences or distractions.
Throughout the weekend we were faced with a mixture of weather and that was something that I wanted to capture within my series of photographs. The photographs show not only a journey through the land but also a journey through the weather, we were walking in and out of mist, fog, rain and sunshine. I felt it important to show this journey within my series as it reinforces the idea of man having no control of what it is faced with when immersed and connected to the land. The landscape photographs sit alongside my images of us walking through the land, this gives the collection of images wider context to the conditions that we were faced with over the 35 mile walk.
When I talk about the zine that I am going to make, I will go into more detail about the layout and order of the photographs and why I place certain images with each other.
Overall, I am pleased with the outcome of my photographs from our exploration of Dartmoor. I believe that the images show a connection which we have with the land as one which we have for each other. The walk was a shared experience between myself and loved ones which allowed me to make photographs which perhaps I have not created before. Allowing me to explore a new area within my practice that could be expanded on in the future.