Right back in my first post on this blog, I mentioned that it was going to be more about photography in itself rather than photography as a vehicle for recipes or interiors. Well, this post is very much about the photography. It’s a little essay about nothing more than some views through a train window.

Back in May, on my “German friends and family tour”, I took the train from Munich to Hamburg. That’s about the same distance as London to Edinburgh. I had been lucky to get a first class ticket at a very reasonable price and be able to stretch out and make myself comfortable for the 7.5 hour journey. I had been looking forward to it. The sitting down and relaxing, the slow travel (ok, the train actually has a top speed of around 250 km per hour, so not exactly slow, but I’m sure you get what I mean), watching the landscape go by and change along the way. Time to let my mind and thoughts wander and just enjoy the journey.

I also wanted to capture some of it with my camera. Whilst there weren’t any overly dramatic views, I still liked the idea of documenting snapshots of the route through the train’s tinted windows. The weather changing along the way, the day slowly drawing to a close, the reflections of the train lights layered onto the landscapes. They’re not perfect images since it’s hard to anticipate what’s coming next and by the time you’ve spotted something interesting, it’s already gone long before you had time to lift the camera to your eye, but it’s in a way exactly what I like about them: the total normality. And the photography in itself. The observing and documenting of a journey.

I think next time I’ll chose a slower train on a more interesting route though…