A massive endeavour!
My close friend, Neil Mercer, and I have spent almost twenty years working on what is slated to become the definitive photo-essay book on Dartmoor, and in particular the influence of tin and tinners upon the moor.
This lavishly illustrated, 1800 page fine art coffee table book, with over 3680 images in three volumes, was published on 4th February 2024, as a limited edition of just one hundred, each numbered and signed, supplied in a hand-tooled box with a genuine Dartmoor tin Stannary Seal embedded in the cover of one volume, while a second has a slice of genuine Dartmoor tin-bearing rock and the third has a tin '2/4' alchemist's symbol embedded. Early subscriber copies were only £1000 each and sold out rapidly, so keep your eyes firmly on the Spirit Of Dartmoor Tin web site so that you can get your order in quickly, as many early orders suggest that our limited edition, priced at £3000, will sell very quickly. Due to unprecedented demand a digital edition is also available to purchase.
The book has been a labour of love and will never make a return on the huge amount of money spent in the pursuit of excellence.
Whilst this is not the place to talk about the story contained in the book, there may be many questions about how the photography for it was undertaken. Dartmoor National Park is well known for its weather, with four seasons frequently appearing in the space of just one hour. Amazingly, in one sequence of the video above we had unknowingly also captured Comet Neowise in the left of the frame, just above the rocks - making this 400+ frames stitched image a once in 6000 year event.
On the next page are a few teasers of the range and breadth of the photographs that you can expect to find in the book, as well as the range of equipment used and the hardships that had to be overcome in order to capture them.
Next page: the equipment.
The Spirit Of Dartmoor Tin