In The Mist
“The mist is the photographers friend.
Embrace it as it embraces your surroundings.”
I wrote that in a moment of “artisticiness” 🤣 however, it is very true.
Here is the story of how after visiting Black-a-tor Copse roughly once a month for the last few years, I eventually managed to capture it shrouded in mist.
The other morning I was trying to plan what to do with a few free days when I noticed the weather forecast suggested the next morning would be fog followed by mist.
Now, I’m the first to admit that weather forecasts are notoriously bad for Dartmoor, it appearing to have what seems to most to be it’s very own micro climate, resulting time and time again in it being blazing hot sunshine one moment, followed almost imperceptibly by hail !
However, my achy old broken wrist suggested that there may be a little truth in this soothsaying, so I planned to get up early and try the always 100% correct method … looking out the window!
Window test was achieved, and although we’re a few miles from the moor, we get the weather (at least ALL the rain) so I felt there was a pretty good chance that the mist I saw in the valley below the farm was likely to be repeated on Dartmoor.
Let me be frank, this is not by any means the perfect method of knowing what will welcome you once you get out into the wilderness, and the drive to Sourton had me at once getting really excited and then becoming resigned to merely enjoying a wander like I have so many times before.
On arrival at my parking spot, visibility was maybe five metres … a very very good start!
I know a lot of people like to walk to the copse from the Meldon area, but I first stumbled across it whilst I was new to the North Moor and partaking in one of my “wander around aimlessly and see what I can find” excursions.
Regular patrons of my work will know that I really enjoy taking images from the top of Shelstone Tor and this is invariably the circuitous route I like to take to The Copse.
On this occasion, however, with the mist being most definitively on the splendid side I bypassed Shelstone Tor and took the track around the hill to the weir at Vellake Corner.
I got some pretty amazing images on the way (see above).
Happy to say that once I got to the wood, the mist had remained enough that I got some fantastic images.
Now, I realised whilst taking these photographs that they would probably be quite popular (not of course popular enough for anybody to actually buy a print from me, but that’s another story for another day!)
Being aware of the devastation of Wistmans Wood due (in no small part I guess) to the popularity of a certain set of images by a way more talented photographer than I, I was obviously in two minds about showing off another of Dartmoor’s stunted oak woodlands.
In fact on a few FB pages, people thought it worthy to let me know I probably shouldn’t be telling people where the wood was.
I’m going to address a few of those issues.
I’m a photographer, I take photos, so I’m hardly going to not show those photographs to people.
Ultimately somebody would have captured these images.
If I’d not mentioned where I had taken the photographs, several things might have happened. People would have presumed I had taken them in Wistmans Wood and and then spent all that energy (people seem to have uncapped amounts on Social Media) telling me what a horrible person I was for going somewhere we weren’t supposed to.
If not this, then somebody else would have pointed out where the photographs were taken anyway (ignoring the fact that most FB pages require that you identify where images were taken, and if you were the photographer or not).
On several occasions I mentioned to concerned people that it didn’t really matter what you did “assholes would always ruin it” … apparently ‘sheer numbers’ was something worthy of note anyway … Yes! sheer numbers of assholes!
Even before lockdown, I avoided Wistmans Wood, because it was invariably full of assholes … yes, of course, assholes come in all varieties … not all assholes drive souped up prickmobiles, wear hoodies and white trainers and have barbeques and leave empty lager cans on the moor, some of them have dreadlocks and brightly coloured dresses and like to dance barefoot and hug trees in ancient woodlands (and boy do they like to tell you about it!) .
Yes I’d been to Wistmans a great deal, at sunrise, at sunset, in the middle of winter, when it was foggy and raining, all times when the vast majority of human beings are nowhere to be seen.
Ask yourself why they have to put up signs telling people not to Fly Tip?
I don’t need a sign that says “Please don’t take a shit in my front garden” because any right minded person would never dream of doing that, so why do we need to avoid telling people not to mess up our countryside … because the world is filled with assholes!
Let’s see some more beautiful images …
And, deep breath …
Probably best to expound further the idea of why I will always let people know where I took photographs.
Primarily I’m always trying to convince people to get out into nature.
Although I completely accept the premise that the world is overflowing with assholes, I also try especially hard to avoid the elitist attitude so prevalent in the Leavisite critique of modern culture.
I’m obviously entitled to my opinion, but that doesn’t mean I have a right to prejudge others. In the same way people with badly thought out ideas have the right to have those ideas, just should maybe practise more restraint when perpetuating them.
Just because I have found one of the secret ingredients that makes my life better, it does not mean that I can judge who should or shouldn’t also find joy in that discovery. (As an aside, it also doesn’t mean I have the right to package this up and charge you £500 to tell you to go stand by a river or under a tree for a few minutes a day!)
Just because a person walks on the moor dressed as though they were from some Mexican drugs cartel and not Plymouth, who is to judge whether or not they don’t feel any connection with their environment.
Just because a person calls themselves “Star” surrounds themselves with the purchases of numerous Totnes* outlets and says ‘vibe’ a lot, it doesn’t mean they have any spirituality whatsoever!
Just like calling yourself a Christian yet actually ignoring pretty much all the basic tenets of Christianity doesn’t make you a Christian!
Just for the record, many moons ago, somebody gouged a spiral in the moss on a rock in Wistmans Wood … I took a photograph, but never used any, because that person (and they would never even consider this) is an asshole.
Don’t vandalise nature in order to stroke your own ego.
Nature is a thing of beauty in itself, if you can’t see that, or you need to continuously tell everybody how much that is truth that it outweighs your need to be in Nature. You are an asshole.
I’ve seen photography and being in nature save people. It’s not for me to decide who should and shouldn’t know this.
*Totnes is a town in Devon well known for it’s free thinking (and forever having Conservative MP’s) … it was the place I first heard the expression “Trustafarian”
Some more pretty photographs …
So, if anything I’ve written here deeply offends your sensibilities, I would point out that you don’t buy any of my work, so tough … perhaps you need to reassess your own importance in my world.
I am of no importance. I don’t pretend otherwise.
I can, on occasion still be an asshole, however, I keep trying not to be.