Shoot One

At the start of the project, I knew that I would be shooting up on Dartmoor. I needed to arrange how I would be getting there and where on Dartmoor I should shoot. I remembered that I had been introduced to a photographer who shoots frequently on Dartmoor. The photographer is called Richard Walker. He is a Landscape and Architectural photographer. He was more than happy to take me up on Dartmoor and show me some of the better places to shoot on there. I arranged on Facebook Messenger to go on a sunrise shoot with him. The place where we went was very difficult for me to traverse as it was beyond my physical capabilities due to my Hypermobility. We made it most of the way that he had planned for us but ultimately the shoot at the location was a bust as the cloud cover was too heavy to allow the sunlight to come through. With the rain that was closing in he was determined to give me the chance to shoot wildlife and drove me to a location where he knew there would be Dartmoor cattle, not dairy cows but longhorns.

We were able to come across two different small herds of the longhorns in nearby locations. I was able to take some photographs before the rain started. The shoot finished earlier than either one of us would have liked and I returned home. Several days after the shoot I looked at the images that I had taken in the shoot. The images were grainy as the ISO on my camera settings had been playing up. It turns out that there are two different places in the settings to change the ISO but only one truly affects the image quality. After spending some time with my camera looking through the different menu settings I found the setting that I needed to change to correct my ISO problem for my next shoot.

I used a Nikon D5300 and an 18-35mm lens for this shoot. After reviewing the images from the shoot in a group crit I decided to invest in another lens. I bought a 70-300mm lens which had a macro function. This lens will improve the quality of my images for the next shoot. Although the images from the shoot are grainy, I have developed what I will be shooting for the project.