Failure is not an option, it's a necessity.

Lost this Substack, got it back this is the post at the other one and you can have it now too. I failed so hard I WON.

Epic Fail.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Most of my failures have been epic. I don’t just break-up, I get a divorce. I don’t just lose a job, I get fired, blocked from ever having another job like it. I don’t just get the get hurt, I get scared for life. If I shutter a business, it has to go bankrupt. If I lose, I lose so bigly that it feels like the earth shakes. I know many of us can relate. Failure is just part of living, and it is also evidently one of the best things that can happen to anyone.

They say if you don’t fail you can’t win. If you aren’t failing it means you aren’t doing much of anything. I have failed so hard in years past, like over a decade, I still feel it when I think about it. Failing is simply winning’s opposite. The old colloquialism, you win some you lose some. The ratio of winning to losing is 100 to 1. You have to do at least 100 things wrong before there is a right.

What does this mean to a photographer? It means you applied to hundreds of LinkedIn posts, of all sorts, and the HR managers have put you on a blacklist because you know that cabal is all sitting in a room somewhere and deciding all of our fates. Failure could mean you low paying photojournalism gig, you know, the one you worked so hard for 20 years ago just went with someone else. “But I have seniority!” you cry, but you know as well as I know and everyone knows that really doesn’t matter when we know a publication has to change up their look every once in awhile. It isn’t personal, no matter how personal it seems or how much the person that won’t hire you anymore says it is – it’s not personal, its life telling you, “not this time, buddy.” One thing failure is not, is boring.

Failure tends to get us into the most interesting situations. Failure makes you change focus, recompose, do it again. It will never be the same as the last time. If you are lucky, it might even be worse. Hold on tight, this is what the ride is all about.

You know, like a video game. You keep spawning back trying different things to get the job done, to get past that next boss. Modern video games let you do it practically forever. Every time you get another chance you change strategy. It makes you better. Think of each failure as a practice run. You may not be able to beat that hard boss this time, but if you stick with it, you finally move past it. Often this is just for the story to progress and eventually you will finish, maybe even gain something you didn’t have before and the process will start all over again.

You have to fail to win. If you do anything well, chances are you will fail often and bigly. I actually believe if you aren’t fucking up, chances are you are being too cautious. Your potential demands you fail or you may never reach your full potential.

But then again, you can’t fail if you don’t do anything.

"What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?"

- John Green

Why Do I Even Bother?

But what really is failure to a photographer? Well, for one it is something that proves you are doing something. You can’t fail unless you are doing something. That something is always a good start. If it doesn’t have a solid enough idea, you learn quickly that you need a solid idea. In other words, most photographic failures are usually points of laziness. You didn’t raise your camera to your eye and you got too lazy to push through your own fear and take the photo.

Failure is often a cry for help. Sometimes you are asking too much to do it alone, or you may not even know how to do what you want to do. In this life we need people around us that believe in us, and occasionally teach us how to do something. Some of those people you actually need to do something for you, so you can focus on the ideas or the execution of the ideas to make things.

If you’ve ever had a job there will be times you are put with another person to learn something. How do you think they learned anything at all? They failed and got right back to it, again and again, and again.

There is no other way.

“Great photography is always on the edge of failure.”

— Garry Winogrand

Failure Is The Great Teacher.

Failure teaches many things. Failure teaches me that disaster strikes, and you must be prepared for anything. I run out of film, or I have a camera failure, my hard drive is toast – now I have back ups. I didn’t sell those prints, or the frames were just no good. Now I expect to keep them and I make each print 1 of 1. Archive it in a closet and wait until its relevant again.

Nothing is quite like a good failure to make everything you do worth it. I like the lows, because there is no where you can go but up.

I heard once that everyone is capable of something; some people are capable of doing it twice. William S. Burroughs said, "A man may fail many times, but he does not become a failure until he begins to blame someone else". There really isn’t anyone to blame. Except maybe you for thinking that you can’t fail.

Real failure is giving up before you even start. So, fail with me. Fail often. Fail big. Then maybe sometimes you might just succeed.

Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.