A good friend of mine from the day job of technology always said that he “makes mistakes as fast as possible as it just means that he’s learning quickly from each mistake”. When it comes to the technical side of photography, this can be true. When it comes to the artistic/creative side of photography, quite often failure is in the eye of the beholder. I’m sure some people will look at the blurry Chicago photos as say yuck. While others may love them more than I do (especially now that they make me sea sick just look at them…).

In the end, all we can do is create and release our creations into the wild…and try not to beat ourselves up too much for “failures” we may encounter along the way (in the many forms that they occur). It’s just part of the journey.

Coaching High School Basketball in Indiana is all about success or failure and the thing we tried to instill into our kids was that you will never gain any amount of success without failing first.

Very few walk in a star and the ones who did many time failed and were never taught how to deal with the emotion the goes with it, failure makes success that much more sweet and worth working for.

Sorry for the long post about something other than photography related but the two do kinda intertwine so I thought I might leave my input.

@ Dan – I have often wondered about that. Certainly I have images today that I am quite happy with. Am I to look forward to the day of discontent?

@ Lana – thanks!! I probably only needed the last line without all that rambling!

@ Paul – very good points regarding the yin/yang. I suppose we have to screw up to have some type of contrast eh?

Here in Alaska, many of us looked up to the late Iditarod musher and South Pole explorer Col. Norman Vaughn, whose cheerful and often-repeated motto was “Dream big and dare to fail!”

Thanks again, Mark, for a most provocative post.
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True there is such a negative association with the word “fail”, but it would be better if we all just accepted it and embraced it as part of *trying*. One thing I loved about living in Silicon Valley is that failure is a badge of honor, because it meant you tried something difficult.