Failure is something that we all have to
deal with, it's just a part of life, but
the nice thing is if we learn how to use
failure to our advantage, well we can
master just about anything.
In this episode, I'm inviting you to join me on
an epic photo challenge that spanning
several weeks, and two different countries,
in the heart of Patagonia.
I'm going to be pulling back the curtain
and showing you how I learn from my
failures, and I'm going to ask you to help
me overcome those failures...
That's right, I'm asking
you to teach me over the next few
episodes, it's gonna get really
interactive, I've got a lot to unpack so
let's get started right now.
Hi everybody welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography right here on
AdoramaTV, I'm Mark Wallace hanging out
in Santi, Santiago Chile, enjoying a
nice cortado, that's a coffee
here, and I'm preparing to go down to
Patagonia, get to that in a little bit,
but I just want to ask you for
permission to make a video that's a
little bit different this time, normally
when I'm making an AdoramaTV video and
I've been doing this for about 10 years
now, I just come on here and I show you
one specific thing, one principal
photography, I'll give you a tip, some
advice, and it looks just fine, but one of
the things that you don't see, are all
the mistakes that I make along the way,
and those mistakes, those failures, are
very important, because that's how you
learn things, now if you've been watching
AdoramaTV for a while, you'll see my say
it, myself, or David Bergman, or Daniel
Norton, or Seth, or Vanessa Joy, or Gavin
Hoey, whoever it is, we just sort of show
up, show you how to do something.
It works perfectly, every single time,
but what you don't see is,
all the days weeks and months of
preparation that it takes to
make those videos, to learn how to do all
of that stuff, and that is something that
is very, very important, for every
photographer because every single
successful photographer has one thing in
common, and that is they know how to
learn from their mistakes, and I have a
principle called failing forward.
If there's only one thing that you learn
from me this year, I hope it's this - it's
the concept of failing forward.
So I want to teach that to you in this video
and then I want to ask you for some help.
Some help that you can give me
interactively over the next few weeks, so
first let's talk about what it means to
fail forward, failing forward is a
process for learning new things, let's
begin by looking at three skill levels,
we're competent at some things, we know
what we're doing, and we know why we're
doing them, we've honed our skills so
that we can repeat our success almost
every time.
We're incompetent at some things,
we know a little bit about what
we're doing, but most of the knowledge we
need is unknown.
We have some of the skills we need,
but we need a lot of practice,
sometimes we succeed, but we
don't necessarily know why, and it's
difficult to repeat our success.
We're capable of these,
we just need knowledge and practice to
become competent, and we fail at some
things, we don't know what we're doing. we
don't have the knowledge experience or
skills to succeed in these things.
The key to failing forward is,
to regularly work at the next level of
incompetence.
Zane is a young high school student who
is beginning a new job at a fast-food
restaurant, one day he hopes to become
the manager.
Zane is competent at a few
things, he can mop the floor take out the
trash and clean the dining room.
Zane is incompetent at other things,
he knows what a cash register is, but he
just doesn't know how to operate one, and
Zane would fail at more advanced things.
He'd love to manage the store, but this
is his first day on the job.
He's got a lot to learn before he's the manager.
After a few days at work, Zane's manager
pairs him with a fellow employee,
so he can learn how to use the cash register.
Zane is now working at his next level of
incompetence, he makes a few mistakes but,
he learns from them, after a week or two,
he is now competent on the cash register.
He's done a great job, and so his manager
moves him to the kitchen to start making
burritos.
It's a skill he'll need before
he can manage the store once again Zane
is working at his next level of
incompetence.
He's making a few mistakes,
he's even failing once in a while, but
he's failing forward.
The key to improving our photography
skills is to dive into those areas where we are
incompetent, by working in these areas
we can master them, and then move on to our
next level of incompetence, and by
repeating this process we will
eventually become an expert in our area
of photography.
All right, well the concept of failing
forward is pretty cool,
but how do we actually put that
into practice, well that's where the
photo challenge comes into play.
Now if you're not familiar with the photo
challenge, let me give you a brief
history.
I created a 60-minute photo
challenge, I don't know, seven or eight
years ago on Adorama TV.
Then when Gavin Hoey joined us as a host
he started doing 15-minute photo
which I later learned that he'd been
doing that for years, way before I
started doing my photo challenges, and
Gavin and I have been doing these on and
off for a long time.
So we've done some photo challenges in
his home studio in England.
We did some stuff where we did a
full day photo challenge with a prime
lens, which is really really one of my
favorite things we've ever done.
We did some pointless photo challenges
we even did a live photo challenge at
Inspire in New York City on a stage in
front of an audience,
where we did some things like
trying to take a portrait using nothing
but the LED lights on little cameras
from our audience and well - Gavin won
that challenge hands-down.
Well no matter what you're doing in a
photo challenge there are three things
that we try to do,
we have a set challenge, so for example
shoot one full day with the prime lens
and nothing else to see if it improves
your photography, that's the challenge,
or try to take a portrait using nothing but
the lights from the studio audience,
that was what we did in New York City,
or try to see if you can take a photo while
running Full Tilt, something like that, so
there's a specific challenge, then
there's specific gear, so you can only
use a specific amount of gear, and so in
the prime lens challenge it was our
camera, and one lens,
nothing else in New York City,
it was just the stuff that we
could get from the audience,
and so there's that kind of a limitation,
and then the third thing with any photo
challenge is a specific set amount of
time, so it could be one hour 15 minutes,
or a day, whatever that is, so a specific
challenge, specific gear, specific amount
of time.
So what I want to do, and the
help that I need from you is,
I'm going to try to do some things in
Patagonia that I don't know how to do.
Specifically I want to do some
astrophotography,
taking pictures of the Milky Way, do
some wildlife photography, some light
painting, and then maybe some stuff like
shooting some video, using some advanced
techniques, like S log shooting,
doing some drone videos with some auto pilot
stuff, things that I'm just not familiar with,
but I know a lot of you are, and so
here's how this is going to work, follow
me on instagram, also follow Adorama TV,
I'm going to be posting the things that
I need help from you, and then what I
want you to do is to give me advice
either in the comments in this video
below, or sending me direct messages
on Instagram or in the comments on the
stories that I post, and I'll be asking you
for help on specific topics.
The first one is astrophotography.
How can i shoot the milky way at night,
what tips and pointers do you have for
me, and the way you can do this is post
your best photo of the Milky Way that
you shot at night, tag me @JMarkWallace
and @Adorama TV in that photo,
and then give me your tips - use this lens with
this shutter speed...
shoot at this time of day...
or whatever that you have, post that
to me, and then I will take those tips
put them together and I'll make a video
trying the things that you have taught me.
We're going to do this for all of the
different videos, so wildlife photography
and nature photography, etc.
So make sure you follow me on
Instagram and look at
the comments in this video below, to see
where the next challenge is coming for
you and for me, and then what I want you
to do is, as a community, I want us all to
do these photo challenges together, so
when we do the astrophotography stuff,
I want you to go to your backyard or
outside of your city or whatever and
then make a photo, and post it, and let's
do it, and see how we do, how well we do
as a community, and let's grow together,
that's the challenge for us, so we're
gonna fail forward, I'm gonna show you
all the failures that I make, and then
we're going to grow as a community,
posting our successes, and I think it's
going to be a wonderful time.
Well thank you so much for joining me,
for this video.
I know is a little bit different
than our normal video,
but I really want to do this.
I want to see how we can learn together.
So make sure you follow
me on Instagram so you can stay in the
loop, and see exactly what's happening,
because this is all going to happen in
real time.
Make sure you follow Adorama TV
on Instagram and subscribe here to the
Adorama TV channel.
Make sure you click on the bell, so you
get notifications and
then I will see you in our next video
and the first photo challenge from
Patagonia.