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.