It seems in this ever competitive photo market place success wins happiness and failure an overwhelming feeling of defeat. This belief that failure is an ending is based on the illusions of success. Success is exploitative, it creates illusions of accomplishments but these achievements are only for an external gratification. We all can look successful but an appearance like authenticity is an illusion. With each success our ego grows more narrowly focused and our willingness to explore other avenues of interest brings a risk of failure, so we stick to our prideful script and take photos of similar subjects to keep the success train rolling.
Failure is not something to be afraid of but to be embraced. If you fail you have a template to look at and find out what happened. I have always taken images that weren't quite finished and ready for publication. Something was missing in the composition and the quality of light that made the subject lack significance. It was my inexperience and youthful know it all attitude that made me ignore the potential of the subject in front of me and made me leap toward the lure of next greatest image just over the horizon.
When I edit some of my older slides for scanning, I find some of these image failures were actually trail markers I wasn't paying attention to and I ended up on dead end paths that did not inspire me at all. There was something I wasn't connecting with in these earlier scenes but still deep down I must of had an intuition, a gut feeling that this subject needed to be expressed.
You can chase success but success is actually chasing you, making you see only what it wants you to see and you are missing the subjects that are under your radar just waiting to be discovered. And these ignored subjects are actually the ones that could inspire your life and others, if only you could wake up and see them.
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