Failure - learning from mistakes.
Sunday, March 26, 2017
I had an utter failure today, but it was not a failure in which I did not learn from. I learned many things today. The outcome today was not expected. The day was fun and enjoyable.. but was met with disappointment.
I recently started to read a book that was recommended by fellow photographer Douglas Levere. The book is called GRIT by Angela Duckworth. The author studied successful people and what she determined was that those people who were often most successful weren't geniuses, they didn't always have high IQ's, talent wasn't really a factor or education level. It was those people who stuck to a long-term goal, allowed themselves to fail, but got right back to the task at hand and kept working despite failures who were sucessful. There were persistent.
I wound up making a huge failure today with a setting on my camera. I have not consistently used this camera system in about 12 years. I'm rusty using it. I used to know it like the back of my hand and I knew its idiosyncrasies well. The camera can act a bit like a cantankerous thoroughbred and it will buck off a bad rider if you don't know it well. One tiny little switch on the lens was in the wrong position today - the camera behaved weirdly - but I persisted with the shoot and all the while not realizing the camera was making very long exposures.
I'm also considering relaxing the ten-minute time constraint placed on the project. I appreciate the challenge but what I'm learning is that placing that time pressure is causing me to make mistakes - big ones. Haste makes waste. I might continue to time the photo shoots but not worry about how long it takes to make the ten frames. I feel like I'm missing great photos because of the time pressure.
So I will go back and photograph my very generous and understanding friend Jeromie Stephens again in the near future. He is a photographer of many talents and I look forward to making the great photos we set out to make today. Today was a practice run for the great stuff.
I recently started to read a book that was recommended by fellow photographer Douglas Levere. The book is called GRIT by Angela Duckworth. The author studied successful people and what she determined was that those people who were often most successful weren't geniuses, they didn't always have high IQ's, talent wasn't really a factor or education level. It was those people who stuck to a long-term goal, allowed themselves to fail, but got right back to the task at hand and kept working despite failures who were sucessful. There were persistent.
I wound up making a huge failure today with a setting on my camera. I have not consistently used this camera system in about 12 years. I'm rusty using it. I used to know it like the back of my hand and I knew its idiosyncrasies well. The camera can act a bit like a cantankerous thoroughbred and it will buck off a bad rider if you don't know it well. One tiny little switch on the lens was in the wrong position today - the camera behaved weirdly - but I persisted with the shoot and all the while not realizing the camera was making very long exposures.
I'm also considering relaxing the ten-minute time constraint placed on the project. I appreciate the challenge but what I'm learning is that placing that time pressure is causing me to make mistakes - big ones. Haste makes waste. I might continue to time the photo shoots but not worry about how long it takes to make the ten frames. I feel like I'm missing great photos because of the time pressure.
So I will go back and photograph my very generous and understanding friend Jeromie Stephens again in the near future. He is a photographer of many talents and I look forward to making the great photos we set out to make today. Today was a practice run for the great stuff.
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