Learning from Failure When Working with Film

As I have previously mentioned, working with film can be incredibly rewarding; however, it can also be even more frustrating and disappointing when things go wrong. After all, you cannot check your work as you go and only once developed do your mistakes and failures reveal themselves.

Today I felt like sharing something a little different. Most of the time we turn to social media to share our best moments…and sometimes our worst. But rarely do we admit to failed expectations or outright disappointment. Usually this would require admitting we were wrong or perhaps made a mistake and that’s not something most would choose to share. I am learning to come to grips with failed expectations and to learn from them. So…here’s my epic FAIL:

Before travelling to Colorado this February, I geared up to take some 35-mm black and white photos. I went all out and bought a fancy tripod, filters, a cleaning kit, etc. Before departing, I took the camera apart to clean it and long story short, somehow failed to reassemble it correctly. Unbeknownst to me, I happily spent a week snapping two 36-shot rolls of film and sent them off for development, only to receive them mostly destroyed.

Of course, at first, my reaction was shock and then utter disappointment. I had just spent hundreds of dollars attempting to capture fond memories and produce beautiful art. I expected that my hard work and investment would pay off, but it did not. After a while of figuring out what to do with all of my ruined photos (of which I purchased enlarged prints and duplicates to make matter worse) and contemplating the painstaking labor of editing them digitally, I decided to post them as-is.

You will notice that there was a light leak which is visible as a large vertical bar to the right of each frame. It is not obvious in all photos but did lead to a grainier and slightly overexposed photo when not apparent as a large streak of light. I am going to own this and learn from it. After all, I still have the memories of the roads traveled and the sights seen and next time I won’t make the same mistake. So here, check out my shitty photos which could have been pretty sweet otherwise and have a laugh! In the end, I still stood where every one of those photos was taken and basked in the glory of nature…she just wasn’t feeling like having her photo taken that day.