Cobham Expedition 18 September, 2024

It’s midday. I’m tired as shit, I woke up at 4am, I’ve spending the past few days tiring myself out trying to rearrange my house to accommodate family, and I’m on a train to Stoke & Cobham, on the shitty South Western Railway. For a train that takes you to posh-arse Surrey, it sure is a disaster of a train service. No air conditioning, old and dirty carriages, not even a tray on the seats. But there’s a short spell of sun - a week of natural light - and I need to make the most of it before the autumn clouds destroy what’s left of the summer. (Of course, it’s not like photography has a time limit, but I got to wait for autumn foliage to make the most of the season.)

This is my first photo expedition since Aylesbury, which was on July. That may not seem that far away, but I can’t afford to go rusty. Two months is essentially an eternity if you want to keep your skills sharp in a field like this. And since I’m already quite knackered, I decided to go for a relatively painless trip to Cobham, and explore the Painshill gardens.

And it turns out… that was not a painless trip to Cobham. First of all, it takes two miles to get to Painshill, and when you do finally get there, it’s much larger than I thought. I only ended up covering around a third of the park before my feet couldn’t endure no more - then I had to walk the way back to the train station. Clearly, I severely underestimated how rusty I was. At least I got some good cardio?

Another regret, though, was that I seemed to have forgotten how to take low-light photos. At least, take them well. I took some photos of the Crystal Grotto, but as you can see by the de-noising artifacts, I really could have improved.

It’s been ages since I took photos like these; again, this expedition has been one big wake up call. But it could also just be the physical exhaustion - it was the last resting point before I headed back. I never got to visit The Waterwheel, the River Mole, the Five Arch Bridge…

You can see more photos on my Flickr.