When Failure Becomes the Point
I need to share something with you while it’s still fresh, while I’m still processing what happened. Last week, I got film back from a double exposure assignment, and it cracked something open in me that I’m still trying to understand.
The Setup for Failure
Our small photo community’s December assignment was double exposure. I decided to do it the old way with my Minolta film camera. The main reason for this: I didn’t want to figure out the digital camera settings.
With the Minolta, it’s straightforward: there’s a little dot that prevents the film advance when you click the shutter. But it comes with a significant trade-off: I have almost no control: Planning gets me only so far, but there’s no immediate feedback. It is like shooting into the void and hope.
My idea was simple: combine a self-portrait with flowers from a bouquet I had. Centred composition. Keep the first image a little underexposed or dark, the second brighter.
And I don’t do well in front of the camera. That’s what I tell myself, anyway. So shooting without being able to see the results is lacking the opportunity of a real process that I can learn from.
What Came Back
When I finally got the film developed, the images were nothing but perfect. Sometimes I’m barely in the frame. Sometimes I’m just a shadow, hardly recognizable. The grain added this texture, this quality that made them feel like something else entirely. But there was something there. A little poetry I couldn’t quite name.
The Part That Scared Me
In improv theatre, there’s this saying: “I don’t know what will happen, but I know that something will happen, and what will happen will be good.”
There’s no writer’s block in photography: It’s easy to take a picture of anything. But sharing it, saying “look what I made,” that’s the cliff edge. Especially when you’ve made something you’re not sure about. Something that might have failed.
I shared them anyway. To the community first, then, encouraged by their response, to social media. Not just the images, but my doubts too. All of it.
What They Saw That I Didn’t
The reactions surprised me. People loved them. Used words like “magical.” Told me this was harder than doing it digitally, appreciated what I’d tried.
What moved them was the serendipity. The genuine quality of imperfection. A guy showing himself soft and gentle with flowers. I just played. I experimented. I set myself up in a situation where I had to let go.
And somehow, in not trying to be profound, I stumbled into something that connected.
What I’m Still Learning
Right now, we’re living in a world where you can create anything with a prompt. AI will generate something at least mediocre. There’s no adventure in that. No real risk. Nothing that can go completely, beautifully wrong.
But to have the courage to do something that could fail? To share work even when we think you’ve failed?
That matters. It matters because we tried. Because there’s a human being in there, taking risks, making choices, letting go of control. That’s what people sense and feel. That’s what intrigues them.
We might be surprised, if we let go of expectations and the image you have about ourselves.
I’m still sitting with this. Still letting it sink in. There’s something here I’m beginning to understand: I might have something to offer that I hadn’t thought about before. Not despite the imperfection, but because of the willingness to risk it.
What I create matters. How I create matters.
And maybe, just maybe, the courage to share what’s imperfect is more valuable than perfection ever could be.
