Saturday, July 21, 2007

Making mistakes


One of the greatest street photographers has to be Garry Winogrand and I was lucky enough to come across a documentary about him at 2point8 (you've just got to love the internet for allowing us acdess to such material). In it he says;

"What I found out, over photographing a long time - the more I do, the more I do. When you’re younger, you can only conceive of trying a limited amount of things to work with. The more I work, the more subject matter I can begin to try to deal with. ____. The nature of the photographic process - it is about failure. Most everything I do doesn’t quite make it. The failures can be intelligent ____; nothing ventured nothing gained, I mean. Hopefully you’re risking failing every time you make a frame."

This just about sums up my philosophy as far as learning more about photography is concerned. Also his idea that learning is about failure resonates, especially when it come to learning a foreign language. We will fail, we will get it wrong most of the time, at least in the beginning but given the right environment we use this to get better. You go out, try your best, get it wrong and then turn up again the next day and at some point it all just flows.

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