Give yourself permission to fail

I recently taught a still life class as a guest speaker and I had a conversation with several of the students about not being too judgmental on their own work. Which reminded me about a very valuable lesson I have learnt, give yourself permission to fail. It will ultimately help you achieve greatness or at least a great photo.

Model Jess Ami, HMUA Emma Marietta from The Corpse Bride Halloween shoot

Often when you are starting out at a new hobby or interest, whether it is art, photography or some other creative endeavour it is all too easy to get frustrated, think you are hopeless and give up. I know I used to do it a LOT. But each mistake or failure or even something that is just OK brings you a little closer to your goal. Occasionally you may get a stunner of a shot, but you are not 100% sure HOW, or you cannot replicate it…and that is OK you take the win. But it is with the failures I believe you learn the most. Sadly, sometimes these lessons are painful, but they do not need to be.

When I had an idea and tried and it failed, I would get quite shitty with myself and think I simply could not do it, I did not dissect what went wrong. These days I will happily experiment and when things don’t go as planned, I look at them and learn what NOT to do next time. It can be fun and intriguing to see what does and doesn’t work. My style of photography, my Dark & Moody is developed more out of incorrect camera settings than ‘correct’ industry ones. I found that shooting my Dark & Moody style created a unique look, my colour palette adds to this. Both come about from years of mistakes and ‘playing’.

These days I laugh off my mistakes and failures and think about HOW I can make changes to achieve what I wanted, as opposed to belittling myself and my craft. We are always our own worst judges, too quick to say “oh it was nothing” or “It was just a fluke shot”…NO! If you take a great image (by luck or by design) take the win, when people comment on it, don’t try to palm it off, just say a simple “Thank You”. I know at first you may feel like a fraud or a flake (I frequently did), but eventually you start to believe in yourself and your ability.

I am proud of myself and my work, I am even a little proud of some of my earlier work. I recently was going through some old stuff on a Flickr gallery and while I cringe at some of it, I am also quite proud of just how far I have come. That old horrible stuff helped to develop my style and to bring me where I am today. I still get that little flutter in my chest when I know I have captured magic with my camera. I still do the fist pump “YES!” when a tried something and it worked just as I planned. I also get the “WHOAH!” when something goes horribly wrong and get some really weird results…some good, some bad.

I guess what I am trying to say, don’t be too hard on yourself. Learn to embrace the mistakes and failures and learn from them. Life is too short to be serious all the time…Enjoy the process, as to be honest, we NEVER stop learning.