Having moved to our new home in Moretonhampstead in July 2015, I was excited to get out and about on Dartmoor on a much more regular basis and start recording all the rural crafts with my then still fairly new Nikon D800 camera. Whilst working at home from my study, I could see some hedge laying being carried out in the lane across the valley, during what was a cold, dry and frosty January in our first proper winter of living on Dartmoor.
The week that Jaochin was hedge laying was characterised with spectacularly bright, crisp and frosty mornings, with thick ice in the lanes where the sun the previous day had melted the frost into puddles that would freeze overnight making some of the lanes quite treacherous. I wrapped up warm and wandered down the lane to introduce myself and ask Jaochin if he minded me taking photographs of him at work.
Jaochin at work was not as photogenic as I would have liked! I had imagined he would be using traditional hedge-laying tools, but his weapon of choice was a bright orange Stihl chainsaw, accompanied with bright orange safety clothing, which was quite ‘sharp’ in the pale but harsh winter sunlight. Hence I felt that this image was better processed in black and white to provide more harmonious tones. In fairness, Jaochin did say that had chainsaws been around 150 years ago, they would have been the tool of choice back then for hedgelaying too – it is just as relevant to record the methods of today as it is the old of yesterday.
Because the lane where Jaochin was working was directly exposed to the sun, by 8:30 in the morning much of the ice on the asphalt was already thawing with rising clouds of steam, and the harsh glare of the sunlight bouncing off the wet surface straight into the camera made it all very bright with very high contrast. By aiming the camera downwards and additionally holding my hat above the lens to minimise flare from the sun I was pleased with the result of this image, and although the road surface is slightly over-exposed, it really was one of those days when the glare of the sun was quite bright and harsh on the eyes. I feel that deliberately under-exposing the bright glare on the wet road surface and reducing it to shades of grey would actually have detracted from the overall composition and just not look ‘right’ – I particularly like the way that Jaochin is framed by the slightly asymmetric composition of the triangular shape of the converging hedge and lane, highlighted with the glare, with the apex of the triangle framing Jaochin’s head, with him looking back down along the lengths of layered hedge saplings.
In the photograph Jaochin is laying the hedge saplings such that wherever possible they are laid with the shoots pointing uphill, ready for the sap to rise in the spring. Six years on and the layering has been successful – the new saplings that grew from the shoots on the layered saplings are now perhaps some 10 – 12 feet above the layers in the photograph. It won’t be long now before the hedge needs re-layering again.