Hound Tor - Here be Witches
Back in September 2025 I was asked by a wonderful group of ladies if I’d be willing to shoot them on Dartmoor. Even though these ladies where witches, we’re hopefully a little more open minded these days and they meant with my camera and not with anything more unpleasant.
Witches at Hound Tor
If you have ever visited Hound Tor, you’ll be aware that it is steeped in myth and legend.
Rising like granite beasts from the ground on the eastern side of Dartmoor, Hound Tor is possibly one of the moor’s most famous and evocative landscapes. Like a great many of the tors of Dartmoor, Hound Tor could almost have been assembled by giant hands rather than be formed naturally. I shan’t spend too much time here discussing the idea of Pareidolia 😁
Hound Tor’s beautiful rock stacks protrude and lean like figures frozen in mid-movement, suggesting something way more animated and active than you’d expect from an object so solid and seemingly immovable. A few hundred metres below the granite towers, lie the remains of a deserted medieval village, abandoned many centuries ago, but adding a more homely, quiet and human feel to an otherwise otherworldly landscape.
It is, of course, folklore that gives Hound Tor its deeper atmospheric feel. There are many legends and myths concerning this popular location (and regular readers will know my thoughts on certain aspects of this kind of thing).
One of the most enduring legend tells of a hunter who for disturbing a gathering of witches was punished by having himself and his pack of hounds turned to stone. Some versions of this story suggest that Hound Tor itself is the petrified forms of these hounds, whilst nearby Bowerman’s Nose marks the hunter’s fate.
For a modern gathering of witches, Hound Tor offered us more than just a dramatic backdrop. Being a place where landscape and myth blur. Where the stones suggests numerous stories, and where the act of gathering, and observing becomes part of a much older narrative.
Like a fair few of my themed photoshoots I’ve tried to create images which feel like they’re stills from a movie that will never be made. Hound Tor becomes a location or a stage charged with feeling and meaning, waiting to be reinterpreted through my lens and the magnificent ladies who came to this beautiful location.
Gina (the lady responsible for organising the shoot) thought that my moody style would be perfect for capturing the weird sisters as they took over the edge of the tor.
I was really pleased with the results.
Originally I was concerned that shooting such a large group (initially I think 15 or 16 people were coming) however, the eventual number was almost perfect, allowing me to spend time with individuals as well as helping the group to work together to create some interesting results.
At the end of the day, this wasn’t purely a themed shoot or an exercise in attempting to recreate some ancient practise. It was an opportunity to create portraits with inquisitiveness above control, it’s difficult to shepherd two people, let alone eight, so the whole process is more about letting people do what feels natural and attempting to capture them in those moments.
Although there is always an attempt to direct, rather than micro managing every movement or even trying to impose a fixed idea, I always try to create spaces for something much more natural to emerge. A gesture, a glance, a moment that feels unforced, a group connection in this case.
On Hound Tor, with its plethora of stories and it’s mystical nature, that process felt even more amplified. The setting offered just enough narrative to invite imagination, while still leaving room for each individual to bring something of themselves into the frame.
For me, that’s what portrait photography is ultimately about, not just the construction of an image, but the discovery of one. Curiosity leading the way.
