There is a deep rooted belief in general western culture that success means never failing. Somehow, failure is unacceptable, and if we do fail, it means there’s something wrong with me. This is of course absurd. We are very flawed human beings and failure is as much a part of our journey through life, and also, failure is part of the journey to success. What does that mean for us as photographers though? How is failure an integral part of our success? And why is failing so important?
In her book called “Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well”, professor Amy Edmondson outlines there are 3 archetypes of failure, but really there is only one good kind of failure.
The first kind is called ‘basic failure’. This is something in known territory where a simple error led to that failure. It can be a small failure or an enormous one. You tomato sauce on your jacket. Or a bank employee accidentally transferred $900 million, instead of the $8m that they were supposed to transfer to a client. This was a huge failure, from a simple mistake.
The second is ‘complex failure’. This comes from failure with multiple causes. Like a perfect storm that lines up and things just go wrong all around. Look at COVID for example, a global pandemic broke supply chains. Multiple factors resulted in workers not being able to go into work due to illness, weather, lockdown regulations. All these things came together to create a massive breakdown failure.
The third type is called ‘Intelligent failure’ and this is the right kind of wrong. It’s where new knowledge and discovery come from. You cannot experiment without embracing intelligent failure. Professor Edmondson outlines that there are a few criteria for something to be called ‘intelligent failure’.
Criterion number one: It has to be in new territory. Something we lack knowledge in to effectively produce success.
Criteria number two: It’s in the pursuit of a goal, whether its learning a new sport or discovering new molecules.
Number three: It has to be hypothesis driven. It requires that you’ve done some homework and not just a random attempt with no preparation.
Fourthly: trying to keep the failure as small as possible, so that its just enough to learn from.
So the question is, how can we try encourage ‘intelligent failure’ in our craft and careers?
I like how Professor Edmondson is able to outline what ‘intelligent failure’ looks like, because it helps us identify where we can go looking for it. Our frame can be easier to see this way. We can ask ourselves, is this a new area for me? Perhaps we’re trying a new genre of photography out.
Lets say for example, we have a photographer that’s only been doing sports events and we’re wanting to branch into new territory: baby photos. At this point, you lack the knowledge in this genre to confidently produce success (by comparison to a specialist in the field). This is good, we have our garden patch to start preparing.
Let’s stick with our sports photographer for this exercise as we go through the statements on ‘intelligent failure’ is.
So number two: Our photographer changing genres is a pursuit of a goal. It has a clear objective of what our photographer wants to learn how to do.
Number 3: How do we make this hypothesis driven? Well, that photographer may try do some research on how to pose babies and newborns that are safe, but also visually appealing. If they’ve only used hard sunlight as their light source, they may want to learn about some indoor soft lighting techniques.
Essentially, what things can I hypothesize I’ll need to know and understand in order to achieve success?
Lastly, keeping our intelligent failure as small as possible. This is an easy one, our photographer could spend some time prior to an actual shoot they have, trying out lighting scenarios on a small subject to get an idea of what works and what doesn’t.
It’s a good idea to try have more intelligent failures in your life, in your work especially. You essentially want to think like a scientist when it comes to this. Scientists have trained themselves to not just tolerate failure, but to really welcome the lessons each failure brings. Each intelligent failure we can embrace fully, only helps us to see more clearly at what is needed for a success.
We need to keep in mind this type of failure best happens in contained non-risk environments. Our photographer would do as much intelligent failure PRIOR to attempting it in a real life situation.
One of the things that often holds us back from taking risks, from experimenting is that we mistakenly think the stakes are too high. We think that if we get this thing wrong, it will be awful. But in reality, if we get it wrong, its just wrong. Sure, it may feel frustrating in the moment, we may be disappointed to a degree, but its not awful, nor the end of the world. We’ve just given ourselves new knowledge.
Failure plays a crucial role in our growth and development. I threw this question out to photographers all over and they had some interesting things to say about the value of failure in photography:
- It’s literally impossible to learn without mistakes. Photography involves so much experimentation with various techniques, from composition, lighting, style and people skills. Failure allows photographers to learn, understand what doesn’t work and refine further. Like a child learning to walk, getting up after each mistake is crucial.
- Innovation & creativity: failure often leads to more innovative thinking. Trying a new approach, angle or editing style might result in failure initially, but can also lead to discovering new perspectives or creative solutions that you’d not have explored otherwise.
- Developing resilience: Photography, like any art form, requires resilience in the face of setbacks. Failed attempts help build that resilience, perseverance and ability to bounce back from disappointments. It’s such a valuable tool to have in your tool belt as a photographer, but also just in life in general.
- Breaking our boundaries: Embracing failure encourages the breaking past the boundaries we thought we had before. It helps us go, “well we’ve never tried *this* avenue before, lets see what happens”. This is often such an exciting stage to be in because you’ll often surprise yourself in the process.
- Understanding personal style: Failure allows us to understand our unique style and voice. By our experimenting and encountering failure, we discover what really resonates with us artistically. This leads us to how we develop our distinctive visual signature.
- Adapting to changing circumstances: Photography and your career in it will be very dynamic. Adapting to unforeseen challenges is vital. Failures teach us to adapt quickly, think on our feet and make the most of unexpected situations, which is another incredible toolset to have in your belt. It can also apply to how we choose our genre, niche and when it may be time to pivot into something new, because what we’ve been doing isn’t working.
Its so good to remind ourselves of the true rational stakes of a situation. Low-stakes might be that someone may have a laugh at our expense or even disagree with us. Who cares, right. It shouldn’t be so strong that it stops us from just trying. As my grandmother would tell me “Nothing ventured, nothing gained”
It’s so natural to want to avoid failure. But when we avoid it like it could harm us in some way, we also avoid the amazing feeling of discovery and accomplishment. We’ll never succeed in ANY endeavour worth trying unless we are willing to experiment, try new things. Don’t forget to think like a scientist! Know very well that many of our attempts will yield failures. Take those failures, embrace the new knowledge you have and go intelligently fail some more. This is the space where incredible personal advances and development live.
Go be brave enough to suck at something new and fail at it.