Nick DePasquale sent me this post with an interesting quote that I wanted to share. This is the first time I have shared something with another photographer, but I found this to be pertinent to the way I see things.
“Film is cheap these days!” That’s what I tell the students in my digital photography classes when I’m explaining concepts that Joe Baraban consistently talks about in his blog posts, online classes, and photography workshops around the world. Sometimes it takes a few seconds for my joke to sink in, but I do get a laugh. In the world of digital photography, we don’t have to think about conserving our shots as much as we did in the film days. With typically 36 shots in a roll of film, I would be careful on how many shots I took not only because of the cost of the film and developing it but also because I did not want to run out of film at the most inopportune time.
Just imagine having to change out a roll of film just when your kid was scoring their first soccer goal! With our digital cameras, we can easily make as many adjustments and variations as we care to; sometimes an adjustment by moving an inch to remove a distraction in the background or creating separation; or a variation showing a subject from a different perspective or point-of-view.
Tom Watson, Jr., the second President of IBM, is quoted as saying: “If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate”. In digital photography, to me, this means to shoot, shoot, and then shoot some more. Not haphazardly, but with discipline and intention.
We have the luxury of being able to experiment, stretching our creativity outside of the box, and coloring outside of the lines like Joe often says, because we are not limited as much by technology.
In this context, and as Mr. Watson was communicating, failure is good. You learn much more from the photos that don’t work out than the ones that do. I like to characterize it this way: there are no failed pictures, just lessons learned from the shots that don’t work out.
In the winter of 2021, I photographed an old truck in a field near my home in New England during a snow storm. When I returned home, I was not at all happy with my images. They were ok, but I did not have a “wall hanger”. Instead of being disappointed, I thought about what I could do differently and returned this year, again during a snow storm. I shot different variations based on my observations from the previous year and came up with an image that I liked.
Nick DePasquale: https://nickdepasqualephotography.com/
