As the title says, this is a view of the village of North Bovey on Dartmoor in the county of Devon, England. North Bovey is really a hamlet rather than a village, with a population estimated at 261 in 2020, spread over an area of 8.7 square miles (22.6 km2). The population of the parish was 418 in 1901 and 519 in 1801.
The photograph was taken late in the afternoon on a late August day, from a small hill South of the village on the edge of the Bovey Valley. The photograph is actually a merger of 7 individual photographs, taken at different exposure values varying by half a stop – through a range from -1.5, -1.0, -0.5, 0, +0.5, +1.0, +1.5, i.e., from 1 1/2 stops under-exposed to 1 1/2 stops over-exposed. The technique is known as High Dynamic Range photography (HDR), because it enables a greater exposure range than the camera is capable of in a single image. (The shutter speed value in the image caption is the mid-point value of all the shutter speeds used at the quoted aperture to achieve the range of exposure values.)
A number of images are taken from under-exposure to over-exposure, typically anything from 3 to 9 images. It is important that the camera is securely mounted on a tripod and operated with a remote cable release with minimal camera shake so that when the images are merged they all overlay each other precisely with no shifts in focus or camera movement, etc. For landscapes such as this it is also important that the successive images are taken quickly, as close together in time as possible, to ensure that there is minimal movement especially with clouds, or even leaves rustling in a gentle breeze. HDR is ideal for high contrast environments, so is great for interiors, and outside early in the morning or late in the evening when there is minimal breeze.
The images are merged (ideally from RAW format) using specialist software such as Photoshop, Aurora, or Photomatix. Essentially the mid-value tones are taken from each image, thus details are brought out in highlights and shadows, the details that are not usually seen in the more extreme exposure ranges in a single image.
I prefer this photograph in monochrome, as although I like the colour version there is a lot of green in it, and sometimes it is very hard to reproduce green tones without them looking too… ‘green’. The dark clouds give a moody foreboding atmosphere, as do the shadows under the trees which also lend an air of mystery.
This is an image that deserves to be printed large, ideally at something like 6′ by 4′, to really feel the drama of the approaching storm.