Turning Failure Into Success

My entry on disappointment seemed to touch on a number of readers and fellow strugglers. I wonder if we can use failures to become successful. I think we can take it as given that simply struggling on without a change in strategy, technique or outlook is unlikely to result in dramatically more success than we have had up to this point.

They say that 9 out of 10 new businesses fail. A bit discouraging, but...

Ever note how many new restaurants don't last long and you could have told them why - surly or slow service, cold food, poor selections etc. etc. What percentage of restaurants fail because the food is bad - my bet is that those failures are a small fraction of the restaurants that go under. The others fail because in rushing to become a success, they forget crucial details which almost anyone could have pointed out, but were overlooked by the new owners none the less.

Sounds a bit like my portfolio for Review Santa Fe - had I spent a bit more effort reading the criteria - it would have been clear that even though they didn't REQUIRE a unified portfolio representing a single project, that was what they were looking for - who's to day whether I'd have had any success within those limits, but it's fairly clear that in hind site, not following those hinted limits did in fact doom my entry.

This suggests to me that perhaps we fail not for lack of talent, but rather for lack of careful analysis of needs, refusal to accept outside advice from those who have gone before us, and possibly simply for lack of a good business plan.

A good business plan - for fine art photography - surely that smacks of trade, not art, of more tricks than skill, of rules rather than imagination? Maybe, but that might turn out to have a lot more to do with our lack of progress than outright creativity.

Could it be that we should save our creativity and imagination for the artwork itself while relying on expertise and experience to guide us in the business part of our work.

Let's face it, we can create wonderful images, but if no one ever sees them, or if they are presented poorly, or if the wrong people see them, or if our pricing is wrong, or any number of other business decisions is made in ignorance, then how are we going to succeed?

Creative people are often not organized people. Perhaps the few creative people who are successful are the ones with the best organizational skills, not necessarily the best photographs. Perhaps it's their energy level which makes them lug their portfolios to more galleries, send off to more magazines and promote their work to more potential clients than those of us who stay home agonizing over whether we're 'good enough'.

Perhaps we need to think of the business part of our photography not as an unpleasant task, to be avoided when possible, with the less time spent dwelling on it the better, rather to think on it as a military campaign, requiring planning and effort and dedication.

Rather we think of the business part of photography as the 'main event', as our skills and creativity as simply tools to be used in the business.

I understand from professional photographers that they spend anything from 5:1 to 10:1 time promoting their work vs. photographing.

If all of the above gives you heartburn and makes you angry, then perhaps you aren't ready to become a photography business, and you need to rethink your definition of success.

We don't after all, have to define your success by sales figures, number of publications, web site visitors or other such measures. But, if we do decide that this is the measure of our success, then we are not only going to have to accept the business method, we are going to have to worship it.