One thing is certain about this new year: We’ll all make mistakes. And because mistakes can be embarrassing, we’ll probably go out of our way to avoid them. But what if, instead of being ashamed of our gaffes and goofs, we embraced them as opportunities to learn?
Case in point: This is the first picture I took with my first serious film camera many years ago. I was proud of it back then, and I even framed it to hang on our walls. But the truth is, this picture isn’t at all how I intended it to look. It was the result of a happy accident — or, to be more blunt, a big mistake on my part.
Here’s what happened. On Christmas morning in 1980, the year Bonnie and I were married, I was delighted to find an SLR film camera waiting for me under the tree. I'd been taking pictures since I was 13 years old, but I'd never had the money for a serious camera. So I was shooting away with a cheap Berkey Keystone pocket camera.
We were living in Buffalo at the time, and the city was blanketed in freshly fallen white snow for Christmas. Thrilled with the camera Bonnie had given me as a surprise gift (like Ralphie getting his Red Ryder BB gun in the movie A Christmas Story), I dashed out to take pictures of the beautiful white snow at a nearby park.
But when I later got the roll of film developed, I was baffled when I saw the prints.
What happened to the brilliant white snow? Why did the scene look like a golden sunset when I took the picture in bright sunlight?
The answer was simple: I didn’t fully understand yet how a camera “sees.” I didn’t realize that a camera set to automatic exposure will expose everything based on an average expected brightness value. (An 18% grey value, to be specific.) That works fine for many pictures. But if you’re shooting a really bright scene (like white snow in sunlight) or a really dark scene (like a black cat on a dark grey sofa), the results will be totally different from how the scene looked to your eye.
My unintended blunder with this picture's exposure opened the door to a deeper understanding of a camera’s light metering system. As my knowledge progressed, I learned how to gain greater control over the look of my photos in all situations. More importantly, I received an important lesson about learning from life’s mistakes.
Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, was astutely perceptive when he said “We learn from failure, not success.”
I learned more from that one single snowfall picture gone awry than from all of my well-executed photographs put together. So here’s to 2025, my friends. May our mistakes be many, and may they be gateways to personal growth, making this an exceptionally enriching and enlightening year.
If you enjoyed this post, consider sharing it with a friend or posting to your social media account.