Why Dartmoor photographs like a watercolour painting

Someone said something to me on Instagram a while back that's stuck with me. They'd grown up thinking of Dartmoor as the bleak, rainy place they'd driven past on the way to Cornwall, or the coast. To be fair they were right, it can absolutely be that.

But on the right day, in the right light, and in a moment there's something about the moor that can be quite magical. The dampness of it, the low cloud, the way the sun occasionally slants through the clouds giving everything this soft, diffused quality that I've never quite found anywhere else. Less dramatic than Scotland, less spectacular than the Lakes. Just this very particular, watery West Country light that makes the landscape look like someone's painted it.

I grew up by the sea, so I'm used to big skies and open horizons. On the moor you get that same sense of space, but the light feels different, heavier somehow, and more atmospheric. It's why so many of the photographs, even the ones taken on my phone, come out looking almost painterly.

This is why I have chosen to print my images on a particular kind of paper.  When I started printing giclée prints I tried a few different options, but I kept coming back to Hahnemühle German Etching — a heavyweight fine art paper with a slightly textured, almost velvety surface. It wasn't a deliberate decision at first, but the texture does something interesting with Dartmoor photographs specifically. The soft light, the muted colours, the detail in the granite sits differently on a textured surface than it does on a glossy print. More like a watercolour painting than a photograph.

I'm not sure Dartmoor would work as well printed on anything else.

If you'd like to see how Dartmoor looks on paper, you can browse the full collection of giclée prints and greeting cards over at gabydoodle.co.uk. Each print is limited edition, numbered and authenticated — and printed, of course, on Hahnemühle.