Tag: Vertorama

A Foggintor Visit

A Foggintor Visit

In my continuing exploring of Dartmoor I have recently found out that very close to where we visited in August was a quarry with a small lake or pond in the middle.

So, as it was half term and time to get a bit of fresh air, we headed in search of the quarry and other interesting things.

Dartmoor just doesn’t disappoint. Firstly you have the views…


You just can’t not take photos when given this as a view.

Secondly you have the interesting features and Foggintor definitely has them. Following the path, actually it’s old railway track, the regular flat stones with 4 holes are bit of a give away, but more path these days, you head towards an old settlement area. Then this disused ruin of a building from the time when the quarry was in use.

Opposite the building is an opening, through what was a big part of Foggin Tor mound, you see hight cliff edges. Stepping of the big chunks of granite strewn around the ground you pass through the opening into the quarry.

Although not a massive quarry, it was one three great quarries on Dartmoor and is big enough is still to impress. I know I was! During the 1840’s it supplied the granite that was used to build famous London landmarks, like Nelsons Column and London Bridge. Locally it was used in the construction of Dartmoor Prison.

It’s view on a day like today, was definitely worthy of a panorama photo.

I found it a bit tricky to get to the quarry floor beside the lake, so we gave that a miss. There are just views everywhere and so we explored the surrounding area for about another hour before heading back to the car.

Sadly we couldn’t stay till sunset, but I was still stopping and taking photos on the walk back, capturing this one with the sun starting to warm up the view.

This is a nice straight forward walk to this quarry with lots of photo opportunities on route.

I’ve taken more Panoramas and Vertoramas that can be viewed in their relevant galleries.

If you fancy visiting Foggintor Quarry, here is the walk I took.
I parked in a small car park just off the B3357 past 2 other after Merrivale.

If you have the Dartmoor 365 book, this walk covers squares M6, with the Quarry in N7, although the box doesn’t actually reference this quarry.
Grid Reference SX 5666 7358

Vertoramas at the Gorge

Vertoramas at the Gorge

Vertorama photos can be great fun and have a real impact on the viewer.

If you don’t know, a Vertorama is a vertical panorama with images stitched together vertically. It can take a bit of practice to get them right, but the result is worth it.

They can be made from stitching just 2 images together, or multiple images.

I recently visited Lynford Gorge and this was a great chance to take some.

My first chance was when walking towards the Devils Cauldron, there were some very tall trees that I wanted to try and capture and show the height of them.

This images is composed of 6 images in totals.

My second vertorama was a lot more tricky, is was down in the cauldron itself. The lighting at the bottom where the water flowed was dark, in the middle, even less light then towards the top a lot brighter, making the exposure range very wide. Even so, I think it worked out ok. A couple of the exposure were 1/4 to 1/2 second, hand held.

Again, this was 6 images, stitched together.

My final vertorama was a lot easier. Just 2 images, but it really adds impact to the photo by showing it in this manner.

Vertoramas can be fun and it can seem like you are shooting in meduim format when you create the final image, at least with the 2 image versions.

This is something I am going to be doing more of and will be offering some tuition on it too!

I have more vertorama images in my Vertoramas Gallery

Exploring Belstone

Exploring Belstone

Wanting to explore more and get to see our new surroundings we headed out to Dartmoor. This time to a place called Belstone to get on to Dartmoor. This area like many, has a few Tors on it. One called Belstone Tor.

So, I had the intention of trying to find it. We did however have the weather against us, with just an hour or 2 between the rain. Approaching Okehampton we get the amazing views of Dartmoor in front of us and we noticed it has snow! Ok, it was patchy and higher than we were probably going to get, but it was still snow!

Now, I obviously don’t know this area at all at the moment, so starting out with one idea of going to the Tor and actually getting to it, or indeed finding it is really by luck, but it didn’t really matter. As sooner as you step on the moor, it is instantly amazing!


So we just followed the first ‘path’ we found an headed off in that direction.


Quite quickly the views open up and you can see for miles into the distance. We headed in the general direction of what looks like a mountain range and what was one of the highpoints in southern england.


Wanting really to find the Tor, we passed a couple walking. Infact the only other couple walking that day that we passed. They said head straight along this path until you find something that looks like a wall, a fallen wall, more like a pile of rocks and go right following it.

Hmm, we either didn’t walk far enough to find the ‘wall’, or couldn’t work out what was rocks and what was wall…


So we admired the views and I took a couple of Vertorama shots. This is like a Panorama photo, but vertical instead of horizontal.


Now snowing a bit and fighting with the water on the lens we turned around and headed back to the car admitting defeat and decided we needed a slightly better day to find this Tor. As usual though, stormy days make for a really great photos. They can be a bit of an exposure nightmare with blown skies and dark foregrounds, but you can try and get a medium and then edit later, thank to the power of shooting Raw.


The snow also added to the impact of the shots and it not something I normally get to photograph much. But living this close to 3 moors really gives me a better chance to see it and photograph it!


Next time I’ll give it another try to find the Tor and maybe do a little more research as to where it is, but the main thing was to get out, get a walk and hopefully get some great photos.

A Short Break

A Short Break

We had a short break on the Isle of Wight. We visit there once or twice a year, but this time was the first time that our youngest was walking around on his own, so he throughly enjoyed exploring all the places we visited.

I had wanted to visit some of the southern coastlines to get some interesting shots with rock in the foreground and long exposured water, but as with most things, time conspired against us.

So we I had to settle for the scenery where we were visiting, or where we were passing. As usual with the island, it didn’t disappoint.

Robin Hill adventure park was great for kids, but it was also great for scenery!

I had wanted to try some more vertorama photography (2 or more photos, vertical panorama), so I tried it out on a couple of occassions. This is a view at Robin Hill


View at Robin Hill

Another view that is great is Brading Down, so I tried the another vertorama


View from Brading Down

I have now created a few of these, so I am going to create a Vertorama section to the website, under Creative

1st Vertorama

1st Vertorama

I finally managed to process my 1st ever vertorama! Its of Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight

A vertorama is a a panaromic photo but it is made up from vertical images instead of landscape format. This creates a large square format photo, which I really think shows of the subject of the photos.

I took these photos back in 2010, so its taken a while to create this final version, but I think it was worth the wait! It’s made up of 3 vertical images, mannually alligned and blended together.

Freshwater Bay Vertorama

I then went on to create another of Brading Down. Now I have created these, I just need to take more photos to make more Vertoramas!!