Photograpy is hard

I got my first lot of photos developed to day since I started using my Canon SLR again. I have been doing heaps of reading and trying to learn as much as I can about photography in the last few weeks. I've decided to finally get serious about something that I have had a bit of a side interest in for years. It turns out that taking good photographs is a lot more difficult than I thought!

I shot a couple of rolls of film over the last couple of weekends playing around with exposure priority, apeture priority, and various other settings on my camera. Pretty much every photo sucks. It has been a lesson in humility and I can see that this will take some practice!

I've put a couple of photos up on my web site, mostly so people will have something to refer back to in time to come and be able to see how much I have improved ;-)

Here they are:






There are various things wrong with all of them. The most obvious being the photo of the underground train being very blurry but I like it anyway. I intend to retake that shot once I have my new tripod in a month or so.

I got the films processed and digitally scanned at Jessops and am not very happy with the results. I realise these aren't the greatest photos, but the quality is quite grainy and I know my camera and the kodak film I was using produce better results than this. Next time I think I'll try Snappy Snaps as I hear they are pretty good.

My blog is stale - but the website's updated

Well, I haven't written anything now for over a month. I very occasionally get technology overload. It's funny when it happens as it is the thing that I am probably most passionate about, but like all good things it is possible to have too much of it. I just find that after coming home from work the last thing I feel like doing is more coding or tinkering with photos in the Gimp or anything that requires too much thinking. I pretty much revert to couch potato status and watch lots of TV, or surf the web as that can be pretty brainless as well ;-)

Anyway, the latest bout is over and I am gaining enthusiasm to get started again on some of my projects. I have been well and truly stuck on my vision project for a while so it's time to sit down and nut out this problem and start moving forward again. There's also been a new release of MonoDevelop and I am pretty keen to tidy up some work I did a while back and get it submitted.

I have finally managed to update the website with our Scotland photos (many months after our actual trip!). So head over to www.jamesfitzsimons.com and check them out.

We are off to Berlin next Friday so I'll probably have more photos to post soon. I dug my Canon SLR out while I was at home and finally learning how to use it properly. So, the next lot of photos will be a little different as they will have been taken on film using a much more sophisticated camera, and hopefully with slightly better technique!