When Complete Failure Is Still Success

Portrait - A. above Marin Civic Center
Originally uploaded by Ame Otoko

I was practicing my portraiture the other day, trying out some new equipment including a Honl honeycomb snoot I was anxious to try out. The trouble started when I realized I introduced too many variables into my day.

For starters, after a long shoot over the previous weekend, I neglected to take my camera out of my bag and take care of the basics: reset all my custom settings back to normal, change the nearly dead battery, check to see if all my gear was put back where it was supposed to be. This is a rookie mistake and one that is easily preventable by a little…um…non-laziness. Consequently, my ISO was locked at 1000 on a day the sun was blazing overhead in a cloudless sky. Was I going to have overexposure problems? Yeah, probably.

Second, I was working with a model I had never shot before. She wasn’t really a model, just a friend standing in for me as a favor. I had to pose her, and she did a great job considering I was too worried with my camera settings to give her any real instruction.

Next, we shot in a location I had never shot portraiture before. I had shot it as an architecture subject, but it turns out you need a permit to shoot portraits inside the building. The permit woman kindly, but firmly, informed me of this fact and sent us packing. The new location was outside the building along the roofline, which she had said was okay without a permit.

Now I found that I left my flash remotes at home. I could still fire the remote flash using the Nikon Creative Lighting System built into my two Nikon SB-600 flashes, but I had been practicing the last few months using manual flash settings, so scrolling through the CLS menus on my camera was unfamiliar turf for me.

Finally, was the introduction to the Honl honeycomb grid itself. I had no idea how this thing was going to work, what settings the flash should be set on, and to be honest, I made some really dumb mistakes.

Consequently, I didn’t get any idea how to use the honeycomb grid and of the 50 or so shots I took that day, I picked 2 as passable (with a lot of help from Lightroom).

How was this still a success then? I learned a lesson about photography. To be brutally honest, a lot of lessons, which gave my ego a bit of a beat down, especially when I’m supposed to be a semi-pro and I looked like a fool in front of my model. Had this been a paid gig, I would have lost any chance for future jobs.

I didn’t learn how to use my honeycomb grid, but I did learn lessons in preparation, diligence, and location recon. These are the boring, bland things that photographers do to make themselves look good in front of clients, yet the difference in the impression is huge. I’m glad it happened that day, so I don’t need to make the same mistakes again.