A pre-wedding photo shoot at Wistman’s Woods
Adam and Scotty are due to get married this year and luckily they haven't had to make any cut backs to their wedding day in order for it to still go ahead. It was always planned to be a small wedding, even before any of these government restrictions came into place. The couple felt that they could do with a bit of a confidence boost before the wedding as they're both not used to being photographed, so they booked in a pre-wedding photo shoot with me in order to get a bit of practice in. Wistman’s Woods is a very special place for Adam and Scotty as it's where Adam proposed so it felt like the natural choice when we decided where to have their pre-shoot.
When Adam and Scotty suggested Wistman’s I thought the name ringed a bell and I assumed it was a woodlands that I'd been to before but when I parked up I realised it was new territory for me, which is brilliant as I love photographing in new places. We walked for roughly half an hour along breath-taking Dartmoor, talking mainly about music, before we reached the woods.
This was my first time at Wistman’s Woods, a peculiar, mystical place and not what I expected at all. From the outside, it seemed ordinary, only oddly placed; nestled in the wide open fields of Dartmoor. However, inside the woods is like nowhere I've ever been before. It's a beautiful group of twisted and weathered dwarf oak trees, covered in mosses and lichens. The trees grow among granite boulders which are carpeted with even more moss. We climbed into the tangled web of trees, carefully navigating on and around the legendary druid stones that form the tricky terrain of the woods. The low coiling branches and precarious, slippery rocks have protected the woods from harsh weather but also from Dartmoor ponies and cattle so the woods have remained unspoiled for hundreds of years.
The woodland is soaked in nature, with more than one hundred different species of lichen within the woods. Scotty was telling me lots of fascinating facts about the place and it quickly became apparent that Wistman’s is not just somewhere that is special to them both as a couple, it's also incredibly special to Scotty and it fills him with happiness when he's there.
There's so much more I could say about the wonderful woods but the real story here is Adam and Scotty, who are two of the most lovely people I've had the pleasure of meeting (and I'm not just saying that!) We discovered that we have so much in common and we enjoyed great conversation, in-between me clicking away with my camera. I'm so pleased that I was able to put them both at ease with having their photos taken and get them feeling confident in time for their wedding day. Looking at the photos, you wouldn't tell that they were feeling nervous at all, they really did brilliantly.
They’ve received 105 individual photos and a black and white copy of each photo making a total of 210 photos altogether. All of their photos from this session are accessible and downloadable for them in high resolution on a private password protected online gallery.
They'll get more photos again of course, from their wedding day which is a day I am immensely looking forward to.
