Another great photography trip this week, this time accompanied by some friends. Thanks go out to Reiss Cleal for finding the location and for driving us there!
This week I visited Painshill Park, a 19th century Garden designed by Charles Hamilton. Situated just inside of the M25 next to the town of Cobham, Surrey it proved to be an easy location to get to and delivered some amazing scenery.
I went to Painshill Park with the idea of continuing my exploration of minimal photography, whilst opening my eye up to the different scenery, colours and textures that London’s buildings just could not provide. Taking minimal photography of a natural environment is much harder than a man made one, the shapes are much softer for a start and the wind is constantly battling against you. Despite all the obvious hardships I feel I came out of the day with some really nice pictures, although I will let you readers be the true judge of that!
I wanted to show this first image because I think it sums up the kind of scenery that I had to work with, beautiful Autumn colours, blue sky with slight patches of cloud and amazing reflections. Plus you can see the diverse range of different tree species that grow at Painshill.
I spent a very long time on this next picture, I felt that I could capture Autumn in one image if taken correctly and on a personal level I feel this has been achieved. This was the first piece of minimalist photography I attempted on the day and it was no easy task, the wind kept blowing the leaf in and out of focus and the change of lighting as the sun went in and out of the clouds was a constant disruption to the colours of both the background and the leaf.
Another piece of minimalist photography, luckily the wind struggled to blow this huge tree around as much as the little leaf so no wind problems to take the shot. Again lighting was an issue, but I love the light blue sky, so commonly associated with the Autumn and Winter months, with not a cloud in sight.
Of course with Christmas being only 2 weeks away I had to attempt an image with a Christmas feel. This was probably an obvious choice and perhaps should be marked down due to that, however, the strength of colour within the berries and the glowing green background should more than make up for the lack of imagination.
What trip would be complete without a picture of a Goose?! Lately I have been using my zoom lens for almost every picture I have taken. I really enjoy the strength of colour it produces and the sharpness of the images definitely makes it stand out as one of my best lenses. It is nice to finally use the lens for one of the main reasons I bought it, wildlife photography.
This final image shows that the gardens were not completely void of man made objects, there are various buildings and statues along the walkways, most of them are broken and have been restored to their previous shapes, this image is of part of the watermill which stands at one end of the park. The machinery inside the building is amazing, unfortunately it was far to dark to get a decent image of the cogs and mechanisms, however, this image of the sails I think works really nicely.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my story of the day. I would recommend anyone travelling through the area to visit Painshill Park. It is a £7.50 admission fee, but well worth it and you can clearly see the money goes to good use keeping the park in a clean and visually interesting (pun intended) condition!
Tom out!
