As humans, we naturally like to show the best of ourselves online. Photographers nearly always show the best of their work. Others might get jealous and think the photographer can never take a bad photo but the reality is… oh we certainly can, we just don’t tend to show it. So many things can go wrong so easily from your shots being out of focus to the wrong settings to bad timing to even something fatal or unfortunate. In this blog post, I will be coming clean and showcasing to you on full display some of my fails in my photographic journey to date. These fails don’t just include the photos themselves but also the experience.

#1 – November ice at Sally Gap

Up first is probably the one that traumatises me the most, the time me and my friend paid Sally Gap a visit on 30th November 2023 during a cold spell for sunrise. I know what you’re thinking… what idiot goes out of their way to Sally Gap during a cold spell, it’s the worst time to go here as it’s nearly always icy. I hear you but it wasn’t a severe cold spell at all and the roads had yet to freeze over so we took a chance at getting our first taste of winter with the Irish Sea destroying any chances of precipitation falling as snow over lowland Dublin with the usual precautions in mind to drive slowly throughout.

We took the long way to Sally Gap from Kilakee Road. Things were going fine for a while, road felt a little slippery in parts but was grand in first gear and taking my time. We stopped off at the bottom of Kippure and at the Wicklow Mountains National Park viewpoint for images before heading to the actual Sally Gap crossroads. There wasn’t much in the way of snow at all to our disappointment.

We got to the crossroads all well and good. It was icy as expected but not terribly so. There was more snow around here but still not a whole lot and not close to the amount you would want to be going out of your way to chase for. We looked towards the Wicklow Gap up at Lough Tay direction and there looks like there was more so we foolishly went that way even though the road right in front of us was icy. We didn’t go too far from the crossroads as it came to a point where the road looked so icy and a steep slope. There was no hope I was going to get my car up that hill so we attempted to head back up the small hill we came down towards the “P.S. I Love You Bridge”. My car was not able to get up, we were stuck.

We waited around with the hopes of the ice easing off as it was only a short while after sunrise and it being November, it was unlikely to stick around. Somebody came from the Lough Tay direction behind us and they got stuck, they weren’t able to get up the small hill. They stayed around to help us out but this was unsuccessful and we eventually pushed their car up fine. Friend was saying to me that I would have to abandon my car and start walking back to get his dad to collect us. I was not having it, I wasn’t giving up. I waited for the ice to thaw a little and got my friend to push the car whilst I attempted to drive. After half an hour, I got up the hill with the car. I could not stop driving to risk being stuck so my friend had to walk back to the crossroads where I stopped waiting for him.

Whilst I was waiting on my friend, another car passed by and I warned them they would get stuck if they went the way I came from but they ignored and went anyway. On the way, they went into a ditch. My friend helped them out adding to the waiting time. Eventually he arrived and we went back home safe and sound but what a shitshow. What an absolute shitshow. Little snow and getting stuck on ice. A morning that will forever traumatise me and I hope I never get myself into a situation like it again. I was lucky and if I went any further or didn’t drive very cautiously then I’d have been screwed. It’s not worth taking risks like this just for a photo guys.

#2 – Don’t underestimate the wind!

This next one was not a fail like the above one where the photos weren’t spectacular and led to an unfortunate scenario. This time the photos were fine in the end but I found myself in quite a stressful situation that I could have anticipated better. I am including it for this reason and so you avoid getting yourself into this in future too.

It was a windy October evening but the wind was northerly. Therefore, I thought I was in the clear. However, the direction does not matter too much if it’s strong to begin with. I set out to the Great South Wall to capture a rainbow over Poolbeg Lighthouse as I watched the radar with a shower approaching. Much of the shower had died off and only got the tail end of it so rainbow operation was a fail. I have still to get a shot successfully of Poolbeg Lighthouse as of writing this post!

Next operation was to get the sunset so I would get something worthwhile. All the showers surrounding would likely result in some awesome light.

The sunset was on. I flew my DJI Mini 3 Pro drone out past Poolbeg Lighthouse for the classic composition of the lighthouse looking west on the sunset which many capture here. All was going well. The sky was on fire with bright orange glows and a moody grey to black cloud overhead. Exactly what you’d hope for.

Then it was time to return the drone home and it was struggling, coming to a snail’s pace. It had no trouble going out but that was because I didn’t realise the headwind was at its back. Any responsible drone pilot or indeed any pilot period will tell you to always have the headwind at your back returning home to save yourself from getting into a stressful situation. A small drone like the mini will also struggle even more than other drones due to its size where bigger drones will have significantly better wind resistance and power. I made a big mistake here by having the wind head on going back home.

I did not have sufficient battery to return to home on time (I had around 35% when I initiated the return to home) and had to emergency land when it got down to 10%. Luckily I managed to land it on the wall rather than in the sea! I asked people walking by if they managed to spot a drone landing and the first couple I spoke to said yes and I was able to find the drone safely. Since this day I have always flown into the headwind first to see how strong it is and if it would be safe enough to fly to avoid this from happening again. I hope you apply the same.

#3 – Aurora & Light Pollution + WIND… Oh dear

It’s just another night of chasing the aurora on the east coast of Ireland. There’s two common spots in Dublin for viewing it due to their relatively low light pollution and decent composition potential for a photo. One of these being Balbriggan up by the Martello Tower and the other which is relevant to this is Red Island, Skerries. That was the case anyway until this night when I “took it easy” heading to Skerries to go for the old reliable aurora shot with the Tidy Towns sculpture.

I arrived at Red Island, Skerries. It was horrendously windy with the wind blowing strong right off the sea at a perfect direction for Skerries to be exposed. It was also not long after the coldest point in the year for the Irish Sea temperatures and therefore it felt extra bitter. I was not prepared for just how bitterly cold it was and the wind made it very challenging to stabilise the tripod at all times. I needed to keep moving to keep myself reasonably warm, I couldn’t stand still. But all of that could be forgiven if I was in for an epic night which was not to be as I discovered another grim aspect. After a few years of no power, they replaced the lights around the Tidy Towns sculpture which were very harsh and completely ruined the composition. This composition was no longer possible which was a massive shame as our aurora spots are very few and far between without a massive geomagnetic storm on the level of May or October 2024 which are extremely rare. It was already wide information that Skerries Red Island would be changing for the worst for aurora chasing in future anyway with Fingal County Council set to install lamp posts dotted around the island but I was not expecting this.

Just look at the difference in the first photo taken on this night in early April 2025 versus the second photo during a great aurora display in September 2023 with no lights on the statue. Horrendous to say the least. Light pollution is the sworn enemy of astrophotographers or anyone viewing the night sky. I can see the lamp posts being paramount for night walker safety but these lights on the statue are utterly pointless. Why not just cover the lights with something? Impossible that night, the wind would blow everything away.

That’s not all though, there was one more thing related to ruin this night as if the unexpected additional light pollution and the atrocious wind wasn’t enough.

There was a very bright half moon out in the northwest sky which would not be setting until nearly 5am so we had the moon to content with to add even more light pollution. I had to act drastic so the night would not be a complete waste. The only other things to possibly capture the aurora with were the Captains bathing area or the Red Island Martello Tower. The Captains was not doing it, it’s not a great composition.

The Red Island Martello Tower was a little bit of a saviour but even it was not great with the light pollution from the nearby houses being a nuisance and the angle was not the best with the northern horizon. Using the very wide angle lens, I was able to get the moon and the aurora in the same scene which to be fair was cool but it’s not exactly what I wanted. The aurora was also far too weak and not worth the journey. For how bad this night went I wanted better, MUCH better. You needed to be there to understand my disappointment. The wind alone made this the most unpleasant experience I’ve ever had to photograph in, the others were just an insult to injury.

#4 – Chasing deer in the Phoenix Park

This next one is a fail and a success. It’s a fail on the original plan but a success overall that I did manage shots worth coming out for. It was a misty late October morning in the Phoenix Park. Two days prior I went here too and it was a very misty to foggy morning with stunning conditions but I did not have any luck in finding the deer which was what I was really here for. I’ve wanted to always capture the Phoenix Park on a beautiful golden misty morning. Misty mornings are my favourite thing to capture, they are the cream of the crop for landscape photography especially when you get the golden light to combine with the mist.

The forecast suggested more of the same so I gave another go in chasing some deer to capture with the mist. One thing went wrong quickly first though. The mist was patchy and cleared way before the sun would show itself. You can just about pick up the mist in the below shot as a deer ran across the park. The mist would end up returning later but not massively so and was still far lighter than it needed to be.

The next thing going wrong – after a deer or two running across the field above with the lonely tree at Acres Road, I struggled to find any deer. At this time my experience photographing the Phoenix Park was low and I did not know where to find the deer which I later learned that you can reasonably predict where the deer will be at a particular time of day at a particular time of year. At sunrise in autumn they tend to be around Furze Road which I found out as I seen an Instagram story from another photographer who was out this same morning and they managed to capture a deer with some stunning misty light. I was flabbergasted.

Another photographer came which me and them walked a decent amount in the direction of the Wellington Monument to see if we could spot any deer. We did, we spotted two deer but a few things went wrong again. The deer were not in the greatest position for a composition and clustered together. The mist was still far too patchy. The sun had risen a lot here and it was a challenging sky to expose for. Look how much of the sky I was unable to recover details in. I could have blended or bracketed sure but not worth it for this. We didn’t bring appropriate footwear so our shoes and feet were soaking from the dew and grass.

Arrived back at the car and the mist started to appear again. Quickly took a few shots including this one of the couple and their dog walking across the lonely tree which looked cool. By this time golden hour had ended so the light is not the greatest.

I think the shot that saved this morning though was this panorama which was one of the first I actually captured that morning. I think the cumulonimbus towering clouds in the sky are very cool looking coming one after the other.

#5 – Aligning a Muglins Moonrise

It’s a mid-August evening in 2021. I aim to get a moonrise aligned with Muglins Lighthouse as part of a long-term project on getting a full moon alignment with each of Dublin’s lighthouses and maybe many of Ireland’s lighthouses in future but the latter would require some serious dedication so let’s stick to Dublin for now shall we?

Anyway… yes I wanted to get the moon over or behind Muglins Lighthouse just offshore from Dalkey. The light would be rather tricky but doable as it was within blue hour so the lighthouse wouldn’t be a complete silhouette. The only spot it looked like it could align is from the back of Bullock Harbour. If you don’t know this spot, there is a series of rocks behind the harbour that are rather treacherous to navigate especially for somebody as clumsy as me. One wrong step and things could turn ugly very quick – I could break my body or fall in the sea and damage my gear. Nonetheless I was pretty committed to the plan and went along with it. I was not alone, I was with another photographer who I shared the plan with. I couldn’t imagine doing this on my own.

We got into position and waited for the moon to rise. Skies were perfectly clear so it looked good. Then the moon appeared and it was way too far to the left of the lighthouse. There was no way I would be able to adjust to make it more in line due to the treacherous rocks and back at the harbour was either completely obstructed or private land. I don’t always get my alignments correct and certainly not back then when my PhotoPills skills were lacklustre at best.

It was a lovely moonrise don’t get me wrong and you might think like some of the other fails outlined above that these are nice shots but they’re fails by definition because the alignment was completely off and it was not what I set out to capture. Bear in mind back then I had to carry my gear with me everywhere I went on my back using public transport – in this case the DART to Sandycove & Glasthule station and walked to Bullock Harbour as well as back to go home. Having a car is a godsend here now. For somebody like me unless it’s something very particular, I can never get myself to go on public transport regularly again.

Fortunately I did not have to wait years for another chance as only the following year in August 2022 I was able to align the moon perfectly with Muglins from Dún Laoghaire East Pier so a much less treacherous spot!

#6 – Visiting Tollymore for the first time

Tollymore Forest Park is renown as one of the best places to be for autumn colours in Ireland. It’s been used as a set in Game of Thrones. I’ve wanted to visit this for a good while and with the help of family, I was able to do so in October 2021. It’s a 2 hour drive from my home to the park so it would need to be seriously good to warrant a drive like this and back in the same day. Unfortunately that was not to be on this occasion as a few things went wrong.

We arrived at the park – well admittedly we found the adventure centre before the forest park but we won’t go into that! As this was our first ever time to the park and signal was lacking as it was basically a valley in the Mourne Mountains, we did not know where we were going. We had a brief look at the map and stupidly I did not take a picture of it or interpret it properly to find where I wanted to go and photograph. I guided my family on what I thought would be the correct path to go. Soon we realised nope and in fact I chose the most difficult trail to go especially for somebody as unfit as me – the black trail. I was gasping for breath at times, I was not prepared with all the gear carrying on my back too. Trying to keep up with my family too who are faster walkers than me.

I wanted all the landmarks people photograph here – most notably the Stepping Stones of course – which were nowhere to be found and by the time we finished up, there was no time left to head to the route I did want to go. It was getting too close to sunset and rain was on the way too. But that’s not all, no there’s more that went wrong.

There was hardly any autumn colours to be found, still a lot of green. This was likely down to the fact that spring was late that year and the autumn was exceptionally warm so the leaves would lose their chlorophyll much later than normal. At the time I was not aware of this and thought second half of October would be a safe bet time to head but obviously not. The image below was heavily enhanced to give some resemblance of autumn as the colours there were more summery than anything! This was also the best image I could get from the trip which is pathetic. I couldn’t capture a long exposure – it was a little on the windy side and it was tricky enough to get the branches sharp for this shot and the reflections are awful in the water without a polariser which to this day I still don’t have! They draw the eye away far too much.

The images below are more like what I actually seen, just look at all the green. This was October 23rd! Autumn colours should well and truly be starting to show by then but I guess that’s the nature of modern autumns for you where we’re seeing colours appear into December on a significant scale when autumn gales and frosts would normally have rid the trees of their leaves by that point!

I returned to Tollymore two years later in early November 2023. It was much better, not perfect but I’ll take this any day over the disastrous first experience I had in October 2021. Much more like autumn, I made my way to the Stepping Stones like I wanted and it was calm, not windy so trees weren’t blurry from movement when capturing a long exposure. I didn’t have enough time to get everything though – like I wanted Foley’s Bridge but I needed to head home. I spent so much time at the Stepping Stones.

#7 – Balbriggan aurora flop

It’s April 19th 2024. It looked like we had the chance of a G3 geomagnetic storm, perhaps the best event since the previous November 5th 2023 which was the most exciting night of the solar cycle to date at least for many Irish people with widespread naked eye observations and even an exceptionally rare appearance of STEVE (strong thermal emission velocity enhancement). All was going well, the orientation of the interplanetary magnetic field was far south and the IMF was decently strong with fair density. Only thing was the fact it’s April so it was a long time until dark and the stats peaked during Ireland’s late afternoon hours. I alerted my Instagram followers to get excited about the chance of another night like November 5th but alas got excited far too early.

The orientation flipped to north by the time Ireland’s night had fallen which if you know anything about auroras in mid-latitudes is bad. I won’t explain why in this post, there are plenty of tutorials available online. Unfortunately due to my alert spreading wide, people got excited and there were crowds out waiting for aurora magic to occur including at Balbriggan where I went (annoyingly people stepped right in front of the tripod often too which could be considered bad manners). Remember we didn’t even have May 2024 event take place yet which would blow us all away so expectations weren’t massive by any means as they are now following both May and October 2024 setting very high baselines. Nonetheless, it was a disappointing night with diffused aurora displays on the northern horizon from the northward orientation and also high cloud that made the sky hazy which is poor for space weather.

It was still nice to be out and help teach a few about the aurora despite also having a bad cold at this time coughing frequently from standing out in the cold patiently waiting for aurora three nights prior too.

I still did my signature star pose selfie with the diffused aurora however and everybody was looking at me wondering what the hell I was doing!

#8 – Another PhotoPills moonrise fail

As with Muglins above in another fail, I set out to capture Dún Laoghaire Lighthouse with a moonrise. My father came with me so I would not be on my own as it was a bit of trek and I did not feel comfortable especially this late. According to the app, the moon would align with the lighthouse somewhere along Merrion Strand. I walked to Merrion Gates from Booterstown station which is a decent walk. I was not aware at the time what would be the best DART station to stop off at. I kept walking until the app told me where I needed to be to align and it got to a point where I had to walk further to get onto the beach. I did not realise just how tricky it would be. To get to the position you basically have to walk through a bog or at least very muddy sand that you can trip over easily into if you’re not careful or have inappropriate footwear which we both had but my father was worse.

I got into what I thought was the correct position with less than 15 minutes to go until the moon would start to rise. Skies were clear and then it started to appear but like Muglins the moon was way too far to the left and this one was even more off. I was flabbergasted what went so wrong. How was I this off?

I attempted to adjust my position as unlike Muglins from Bullock Harbour, I could just walk further down the strand for this. Unfortunately my alignment was so well off that by the time I did get alignment, it was so high in the sky that I had to capture in portrait orientation as below and blend two shots together to get the exposure on the moon without it being completely blown out. The moon isn’t even completely in line here, it’s a bit to the right. This was a complete fail. These two moonrise fails made me try very hard to improve on my PhotoPills skills which I have definitely gotten better since without sounding too big headed.

That’s some of the fails I recall in my photographic journey to date. I’ve had more but at the moment I cannot think of other major ones. Over time I will update this post to include some more. I hope you have learned a little something and it will help you avoid making the same mistakes as me!

Thanks for reading.

Sryan