7 Shutters Young Enterprise Competition

I have joined the 2nd Years as a Financial Director on their venture to enter the Young Enterprise Awards Competition, although I have joined late and after they have won the University finals we are now heading for the North West Regional Finals and then hopefully on to the UK Finals which will lead to the European Finals.

Yesterday we ventured to the Bentley Motors Young Enterprise Start Up talk.

Despite feeling pretty awful all day as I was not feeling too well, I decided to still go as we had an opportunity to meet some of our competitors in the competition and it was also a chance to hear about Bentley Motors Graduate/Undergraduate Schemes.

They have an amasing program for University Graduates and Undergraduates and although they are a relatively small company compared to their competitors they  take on over 200 University Students on their graduate/undergraduate schemes.

 

It was interesting to hear from some Graduates talking about their experience with Bentley Motors, and I was pleased to see there were also a few more mature students that attended besides myself.

 

Their schemes are quite impressive and allow the students to grow and experience different roles within the company and some continue on with Bentley Motors after their studies have finished.

 

The quality of their training scheme matches the brands high class image and is extremely luxurious in its content, and they look after their students with a nurturing attitude.

Although not many creative positions are available for students in the creative fields such as photography, the business skills positions are in abundance and I believe they are developing ways to incorporate creative positions.

You can see why they are as lucrative and as successful as they are as they do take the best of the best in student terms and nurture them, I was very pleased to hear that Universities such as Sheffield Hallam are among those taken on and it is not just the cream of Universities such as Oxford and Cambridge that get a look in, in fact there are few that are.

 

I was very impressed and it gives me some hope to hear that age is also no barrier for entry to a company such as Bentley Motors, as they take people on their ability and not their age, so I would have some hope if I decided to apply, although I doubt that would be the way I go with my future, but it was nice to know that it was an option.

When you fall off the horse, get back on!..

After my disappointing weekend I thought I would take advantage of reading week at University and go into town and cover one of our projects by walking around Manchester taking portraiture photographs.

I thought I would cover all my bases and use the techniques I discussed in my last post. I kept my shutter speed above 1/200 and the results were a lot better. While not perfect, the blur I was experiencing has definitely reduced and it really shows, especially as I was photographing moving subjects.

I had a mixture of results, some I was please with and some I was not so pleased with but at least now I can move on and focus on my technique and the technical side of compositions etc, rather than worrying solely about blur. 

I tried to work on single image narrative and I managed to get one image that showed the contrast between poor and not so poor, the irony of the picture was that the words 'the difference' was written above the door. The concept I feel worked but the picture was poor as it was busy as people walked right into my shot as it was busy, and I was rushing to get the image before I was seen and I have my elusive blur that crept in.

I attempted narrative shots and portraiture with a background story. Brian who was drawing on the street was an interesting guy. At first glance his pictures were not much to look at but when you take a closer look they were very technical and after a conversation he was extremely fascinating.

While he could hardly stand while he was speaking to me, he was telling me some of his history and all about his work as an artist. He was telling me that he has some of his art work exhibited in Greece and he also shared some of his conceptual work with me that he had on his mobile phone. His van had been stolen a few days prior so what he had on show was just a few pieces that he had managed to get together for the day. It was well worth standing with Brian for half an hour chatting.

 I decided a few portrait shots could not be missed, so I honed in on the street musicians to test out my blur control.

I thought I would do some environmental perspective shots while we were in Piccadilly Gardens at the fountain.

 My narrative portraiture shots of the day...

The obligatory street cleaner shot.

The girls in fancy dress..

The funny rude sign...

 It was freezing but it didn't stop some from enjoying the cool sun rays...

and of course the police interrogation...

and the street vendors..

and of course some religion.

 

Photography Frustration

I was really looking forwards to catching some great photos this weekend at our annual Muncaster Castle Halloween trip but I was sorely disappointed.

For quite a while my photos have been coming out blurry, I thought by buying a new lens things would improve but sadly they have gone worse and not better.

I thought after spending the last few weeks learning about camera angles and narratives and spotting things that I wouldn't normally look for and being more deliberate when taking photos that my photography would have got better not worse. 

Unfortunately my photos have never been as bad as what they are now, never ever have I taken such badly blurry photos, and I am very aware and very disappointed in myself.

Part of my problems have been trying to balance the ISO, Shutter Speed and F-Stops, making sure my shutter speed is not too slow and the ISO is not too high. 

When I got back from the trip I learnt that the shutter speed should not be slower than the focal length of the lens, so for example with my lens being a 200mm lens the shutter speed should not be lower than 1/200, so I will give that a go over the coming days and see how I get on.

I am so annoyed with myself, I normally come back with some great shots to document our trip but I came back with hardly any photos apart from a few blurry shots. I really struggled. Half of me wishes I whipped out the mobile so that I came back with a couple of good ones, but I was determined and stuck with it.

My other issue was the camera setting were all out of whack, the focal illumination light was shining all over the place blinding people, I was told off at one point by the lady of the manor for using flash inside the house, I didn't bother to explain that it was a focal assist light, so I ended up shooting walls mostly. I finally found the setting on the camera when I got home and turned the blinding light off. Hopefully I can now photograph more discreetly and not feel so conscious of upsetting everyone.

The focal points on the camera have a life of their own, and I am finding I cannot focus on what I want to focus on, so I missed those shots that I wanted to include a nice bokeh background, or put the foreground out of focus with the background in focus. I was getting very frustrated about not being able to focus on what I needed to get the shot that I wanted.

Most of the time it didn't matter if I thought the shot was in focus or not they still turned out blurry even when I thought the shot was in focus the results showed that they were definitely not.

So I did not enjoy this weekends photography at all, it made me feel very disappointed and frustrated, if I was not on this photography degree course I think I would have put the camera down and never picked it up again.

The camera needs a sensor clean and the lens needs calibrating and together with a few tweaks of the settings on the camera of the focal points, turning off the focal illuminating light and adjusting the shutter speed to match the focal length of my lens and using the exposure bias which I failed to use all weekend, hopefully this week I should get some better shots. 

While I feel like I missed a good opportunity for some good shots I have learnt a thing or two and I suppose this is what the journey is all about.

Here are a few of the shots that turned out not so blurry, definitely not my best shots but the best shots from the trip.