Evening. One day last week, after rain. I walked across the hill side and up to the top of Moel Eiddew to hear the wind blow unhindered and exorcise the fizz of the city in my head. On this low and unfrequented summit just south of the main bulk of Snowdonia I set up my camera and gazed for a few minutes at the rather other-worldly juxta-position of bleak moorland and modern technology. 

Standing by the wind farm, the breeze is made visible by the graceful spinning of the blades and the swoosh of their passage through the constantly moving air. I had never been so close before to one of these gigantic constructions that the first sight of them made me start. While I attempted to fathom the surprise I was feeling I came upon the realisation that I felt out of step: out of step with modernity, out of step with the mountains and in some kind of nomansland between the two.
 
Standing next to my hand-made, self-designed pinhole camera, before this display of albeit admirable technical wizardry, I felt like Don Quixote tilting madly at windmills. I imagined the electricity which was being generated before me being sent off through the national grid to its various uses: powering factories, streetlights, televison sets, sound systems, burglar alarms... 

This somewhat odd notion led me to reflect on some of my own values. A list sprang immediately to mind. I believe I value quality rather than quantity, silence over noise, the hand-made over the mass-produced, reflection over entertainment, challenge rather than convenience, simplicity over sophistication, the idiosyncratic rather than the conventional, slowness over speed. I might here be comparing digital and pinhole photography (though, explicitly, I am not) but the comparison is easy to draw. I realized too in that split-second that this beautiful, simple method of communciation was as much part of my way of seeing as the glasses on my face and that the insane nobility of Don Quixote is present in all of us who partake in these rather quirky, anachronistic photographic methods. 

Perhaps we will end up sane and broken like the Don, though I hope we don't. In the meantime I will continue to preserve and revel in my enjoyment of unconventional and keep tilting at the windmills: crazy, particular but ecstatic.

From a beautiful, sunlit, evening in the dunes of Aberdyfi, Wales.

I am constantly astonished at the tonal range possible with paper negatives and at the sharpness obtainable with a well-made pinhole.

4x5 pinhole, paper negative. Click the image to view larger.

The Dart is a beautiful companion, continually moving, tracing lines, shapes, geometries of its own. Descending into the shallow moorland valleys hear the high, embracing pitch of the constant breeze punctuated by its roaring and gurgling. To be near it means to drink, to bathe; cool respite; thirst slaked by cold, peaty water of life.

The West Dart River - beautiful, cool and lively.

The intricately patterned granite monolith displays a texture reminiscent of the patterns in the clouds. The sky and land so frequently seem unified here on the moor.

I have fought shy of the truth of this photograph for some months now. My photographic eye by default favours contrast and shadow whilst here there is little of either, and, as a result, I nearly discarded this image. Now time has passed, I am revelling in the delicacy of the grey, the softness of the light, and a vivid memory of the dampness clinging to the lichen-covered granite.

Sharp wind wrapping ancient stone
Sun, time-telling, spiking earth.
Menhir piercing the millenia
with a howl and a sigh,
drawing its arc,
digging its home,
pointing the endless way.

Symmetry of tones and shapes on the wild moor.

My submission for this year's World Pinhole Photography Day

Paper negative, 50mm f150 4x5 camera (Chilli Camera)

Bellever and Powdermills: even in the lowlands, the atmosphere of the high moor is all around.

Having run into the doldrums with the Dartmoor project, I am finding the process of revisiting the negatives once more quite fascinating. After several months, it feels almost like viewing someone else's work; the new-found distance makes the whole thing easier to approach critically and, dare I say, dispassionately. Oddest of all, I find the photographs speak to me far louder than they did in the days and weeks immediately after the walk. For one who is perhaps too self-critical, this is a refreshing revelation.

I wanted initially to adopt a very purist approach to cropping, that is to say, not to crop at all. This image definitely benefits from the crop which serves also to enhance the gorgeous, smooth, HP5 grain structure. Click the image to view larger (and better).

I am still finding curious synchronicities between poems I have written and photographs I have made on quite distinct and separate occasions. The now obvious correspondences are frequently highlighted by other people or by ideas triggered whilst reading or looking at art work. These correspondences were not guessed at nor explicitly constructed at the time of making and feel very much like a strange and unwitting extension of the lack of control seen in pinhole photography where unexpected elements often pop up quite independently of the photographer's input; elements which nevertheless weave a thread through the work and add a satisfying unity.

Here are two items, a photograph of an old still in West Wales which has always pleased me with its subtle play of light and dark and the shapes it contains, and a poem written at a time some years ago when I would spend periods of time in meditation in a dusty shed. Only now after many months have the similarities and the spirit of both occasions leaped out at me and the particular resonance of the gentle presence of people, and their absence.