A False Start
We were almost halfway to the bottom of King’s Tor from the car park when I realised something was missing. As usual I decided it was Lee’s fault, in a round about way. You know Lee - he goes through more camera equipment than MPB. Over brunch in Morrison’s at Tavistock he showed us his two most recent acquisitions, one of which was a teensy Canon Powershot with a fixed lens, so small that it would almost fit in your back pocket. “It’s got the same sensor as the 80D,” he told us enthusiastically. It looked very impressive, we conceded. Dave reminded us he’d had the same Sony for ten years and was more than happy with it. I kept quiet - I had a bit of a splurge earlier in the year as some of you may have noticed. But examining Lee’s miniscule new camera had left me temporarily relieved of any sense of dimension, and it was only as we all trudged across the boggy ground to our first shoot of this four day adventure that I realised I was feeling distinctly weightless. I’d put my wellies and my waterproof coat on, and then completely ignored the camera bag in the boot of the car before setting off.
Should I try and style it out and pretend I wasn’t planning to take any photos here at King’s Tor? Let’s just for a moment imagine the conversation that might have taken place.
“Where’s your camera bag Dom?”
“Oh, I’ve been here before and I decided just to enjoy the walk this time.”
“So why are you carrying your tripod then?”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to work was it? I began the walk of shame back towards the car, with the echoes of laughter ringing in my sorry ears. As if anyone would have really believed I wasn’t planning to take any photos. At least as I returned ten minutes later, this time with the camera bag, I had the pleasure of marching straight across Dave’s very first composition in my bright red raincoat. You can’t beat a bit of karma to push back against a dose of ignominy. Didn’t stop him getting the shot though!
Now that we were fully convened once more, we began to make our way towards the tor, tottering across a wobbling slab to the other side of the stream at the bottom of the shallow valley and then following the dry stone wall up to the flat ground upon which the Princetown railway line used to run. It’s hard to imagine that trains once passed through this ever rising landscape, no doubt ferrying the latest collection of convicted felons to the famous prison on the moor just a couple of miles to the north of here. It’s not the steepest of hikes in these parts, and it wasn’t long before we’d all wandered off in separate directions to explore the craggy tor and its collection of windblown hawthorns alone. That’s the nice thing about this little gang. You can all enjoy the camaraderie of the adventure, but at the same time it’s possible to disappear and lose yourself for a while.
Autumn had fallen like a guillotine in the last dregs of August, severing the warmth of a few days earlier so decisively that it was as if the long dry summer had never happened at all. The heavy showers that would both dog and define our trip were yet to arrive, but they weren’t far away. Not that we really wanted blazing hot weather for this assignment. I’d been here just once before, with Ali on a hot June afternoon last year, and while she basked in the warm sunshine among the rocks, I explored with the camera. Not that any of my pictures ever even made it into the editing software. But still, I remembered the tree and found it easily enough again now, its two limbs following the contours of the granite boulders from which it grew in perfect symbiosis, almost as if it had been born from them, splitting the rocks asunder in a bid for the light. I set up the tripod, gradually moving closer to the subject until I needed to swap over to the wide angle lens.
The view I eventually decided to compose had been recently enjoyed by a Dartmoor Pony. I could tell this because by now I was kneeling right beside a copious pile of what it had left behind to mark the occasion. Maybe the pony needs to take up landscape photography as a hobby. Hopefully it will remember to take the camera with it when it does.
A False Start
We were almost halfway to the bottom of King’s Tor from the car park when I realised something was missing. As usual I decided it was Lee’s fault, in a round about way. You know Lee - he goes through more camera equipment than MPB. Over brunch in Morrison’s at Tavistock he showed us his two most recent acquisitions, one of which was a teensy Canon Powershot with a fixed lens, so small that it would almost fit in your back pocket. “It’s got the same sensor as the 80D,” he told us enthusiastically. It looked very impressive, we conceded. Dave reminded us he’d had the same Sony for ten years and was more than happy with it. I kept quiet - I had a bit of a splurge earlier in the year as some of you may have noticed. But examining Lee’s miniscule new camera had left me temporarily relieved of any sense of dimension, and it was only as we all trudged across the boggy ground to our first shoot of this four day adventure that I realised I was feeling distinctly weightless. I’d put my wellies and my waterproof coat on, and then completely ignored the camera bag in the boot of the car before setting off.
Should I try and style it out and pretend I wasn’t planning to take any photos here at King’s Tor? Let’s just for a moment imagine the conversation that might have taken place.
“Where’s your camera bag Dom?”
“Oh, I’ve been here before and I decided just to enjoy the walk this time.”
“So why are you carrying your tripod then?”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to work was it? I began the walk of shame back towards the car, with the echoes of laughter ringing in my sorry ears. As if anyone would have really believed I wasn’t planning to take any photos. At least as I returned ten minutes later, this time with the camera bag, I had the pleasure of marching straight across Dave’s very first composition in my bright red raincoat. You can’t beat a bit of karma to push back against a dose of ignominy. Didn’t stop him getting the shot though!
Now that we were fully convened once more, we began to make our way towards the tor, tottering across a wobbling slab to the other side of the stream at the bottom of the shallow valley and then following the dry stone wall up to the flat ground upon which the Princetown railway line used to run. It’s hard to imagine that trains once passed through this ever rising landscape, no doubt ferrying the latest collection of convicted felons to the famous prison on the moor just a couple of miles to the north of here. It’s not the steepest of hikes in these parts, and it wasn’t long before we’d all wandered off in separate directions to explore the craggy tor and its collection of windblown hawthorns alone. That’s the nice thing about this little gang. You can all enjoy the camaraderie of the adventure, but at the same time it’s possible to disappear and lose yourself for a while.
Autumn had fallen like a guillotine in the last dregs of August, severing the warmth of a few days earlier so decisively that it was as if the long dry summer had never happened at all. The heavy showers that would both dog and define our trip were yet to arrive, but they weren’t far away. Not that we really wanted blazing hot weather for this assignment. I’d been here just once before, with Ali on a hot June afternoon last year, and while she basked in the warm sunshine among the rocks, I explored with the camera. Not that any of my pictures ever even made it into the editing software. But still, I remembered the tree and found it easily enough again now, its two limbs following the contours of the granite boulders from which it grew in perfect symbiosis, almost as if it had been born from them, splitting the rocks asunder in a bid for the light. I set up the tripod, gradually moving closer to the subject until I needed to swap over to the wide angle lens.
The view I eventually decided to compose had been recently enjoyed by a Dartmoor Pony. I could tell this because by now I was kneeling right beside a copious pile of what it had left behind to mark the occasion. Maybe the pony needs to take up landscape photography as a hobby. Hopefully it will remember to take the camera with it when it does.