The Gift of Creative Mistakes

How the pursuit of perfection limits your photography

I make a lot of mistakes, both personal and professional. I wouldn’t have time to live the rest of my life if I listed each one. Considering my perfectionist streak, I wouldn’t get halfway through. 

But if there is one place where I accept mistakes more, it’s with photography. Unlike other aspects of my life, I came to an early understanding and acceptance that errors and mistakes are part of the creative process. Mistakes aren’t to be avoided but embraced. As I learn repeatedly, my mistakes, rather than successes, teach me the most. 

My aversion to mistakes occurs when I see photography as a competition rather than an opportunity for play. It becomes an exercise of absolutes, good and bad, successes and failures. Even if I only compete with the photographer I aspire to be, my priority shifts from experiencing joy to hitting a benchmark. When I do that, I lose sight of the fact that I had great fun while doing it. 

When I find myself in that space of joy, fun, and play, I tap into a place where I am free to create. It’s a mindset that doesn’t fixate on what I can’t do but rather what would happen if I tried something different. It is letting go of the outcomes that allow the photograph to be what it needs to be rather than what I want it to be. 

I witness other less-experienced photographers obsessed with avoiding mistakes. They want to know the one “right way” to do something. They are reluctant to take risks or, worse yet, trust their instincts. Creativity is strangled to death by wanting to be on the winning side of a struggle between right and wrong.

As I often tell my students, the hard drives connected to my computer contain mostly bad photographs. They are photographs that fell short for one reason or another. However, I don’t consider them failures. Those images provide valuable insight into how I see and photograph the world. Those photographs will never see the light of day but shape how I see light and shadow, line and shape, color and gesture. Without those images, I wouldn’t be the photographer I am today and the one I hope to grow into.

Photography is a meditative practice, providing me the means to be present and in the moment, free of judgment and the trap of absolutes. In that space, I am periodically gifted with a photograph that fills me with pride, satisfaction, and joy.

When I hold a finished print in my hands, it’s tangible proof that accepting the entire process, flaws and mistakes included, has its rewards.