Failure is Mandatory

T
here are a hundred different reasons why we choose to pick up a camera and start out on the journey to becoming a photographer. It might be the sudden flash of inspiration in someone else’s photograph, it might just happen slowly over time as you graduate from smartphones, it might be because you want to capture memories of your family. The starting points are different for all of us, but when we start getting serious about photography then there’s often a common end goal.

In my case that goal was this – the ability to look at a scene, to understand what its appeal is and to know precisely what to do in order to best capture that appeal through a lens. If you are seriously into photography, then perhaps you share the same end goal – the competence to understand a scene instinctively and to know what equipment can best capture it.

Getting to that point – sufficient competence to take the photograph we can see in our minds-eye – is not a straight road though. It’s actually full of twists and turns, pot-holes, dead-ends, hairpins, adverse conditions, equipment issues and road-blocks. Many people give up and turn back before they get closer to the end of the journey and that’s a shame because the setbacks, the blunders, the screw-ups and, yes, even the catastrophes are an absolutely integral part of the process.

I’d go as far as to say that failure is not just an option – it’s mandatory.