Power Past Your Defeats

One thing in that Martin Evening video hit me hard. It's the section that begins at 15:10 with the subheading, "A Wasted Opportunity." He tells the story of stumbling on a new technique that he liked, but failing to sell new clients on the idea because they all expected to be shown numerous examples when he had only one.

Wasted opportunities...yeah. Ouch.

[Ed note: Warning, bloviation alert! This one goes on a bit.]

Throughout my life, I've worked out "ways of working," some of which were successful. When I taught high school, there was a wonderful natural-light studio right in the art room. The top floor and attic of an old building had been remodeled by a school community member who was a famous architect, and he had opened up the floor of the attic to create a large room with a mezzanine—upstairs there were walkways with large areas open to below. The purpose was so the large skylights he put in would reach the floor level of the main room two stories down. (Hope you're able to picture this.) The skylights were cut into the ceiling of the mezzanine level reaching up to the roof, and the sides of this cutout area, between ceiling and roof, were panels of drywall that reflected the incoming light wonderfully—and in ways that changed depending on the outdoor weather as well as the time of day. I put a portable backdrop up on one of the walkways, right under one of the skylights, and started doing portraits of students. The light could hardly have been better. I was influenced by August Sander and especially Mike Disfarmer (original name, Mike Meyer—he picked his nom d'artiste, by which he meant, "Mike, not a farmer," because he hated farming, the basis of the local economy of Heber Springs, Arkansas, where he lived, and a life to which he didn't want to be consigned). Above was an enormous skylight with a virtual softbox descending from it. (I'm at a loss for words here, to describe this exactly.) I found that by moving the subjects toward the skylight or farther away from it I could control the light, and I did a number of nice portraits of the girls (it was a K-12 school for girls) in a sort of plainspoken style. One year I think 15 of the senior pictures in the yearbook were these portraits I had taken.

But I got discouraged and quit. There were various problems. I couldn't work out how to charge a little money to cover my expenses—I've mentioned before that one girl's mother wouldn't use me because I was way too cheap, and thus below the family's dignity, whereas another girl excoriated me at great length for "exploiting" the "captive market" out of greed (I had started charging $80 per portrait to cover film, paper, and mat board). Then there was the issue of favoritism—I was asking some students to pose, and they were often the kids I knew and liked or girls who were attractive. That wouldn't do. Then there was scheduling. As my pictures got more popular, many kids started clamoring to have me make their portraits. But I could only do one or two per weekend—a typical portrait took four to six hours of work, from the shoot to the finished print. And then parents began to get involved with demands. And, frankly, I started losing interest when it became just a production-line sort of thing. It was like I had proven the concept to myself, I knew I could do it, and I wasn't very interested in simply continuing to work, especially when it wasn't on my own terms. (I'm not going to show an example out of respect for the privacy of the individuals.)

Robbed
The same thing happened again a few years later. I was interested in finding a good way to photograph family groups. John Szarkowski once told of a little boy who handed him a picture saying, "this is a picture of me having my picture taken!" Family groups look too posed to me—of course they are posed, and there is no getting around that, but they look too much like this is a picture of us getting our picture taken. And of course you always have to compromise, because one person will look their best in one frame but another in another. (That was pre-Photoshop.) So I tried to take a page out of Richard Avedon's book and photograph one person at a time, but with parts of the people next to them showing at the edges. This was color 35mm.

I eventually got hired by a divorced D.C. lawyer. I can't remember how I knew him or how he found me. He had his two kids for the weekend and his parents were coming to visit, and he wanted a portrait of everyone. I saw this as an opportunity to try out my new idea. I described the plan to him, quoted a price of $600, and he agreed. At his house, I set up a black backdrop and my lighting, and put the camera on a tripod and a board on the floor, and rotated them in and out, down the line. The man would appear in the middle, flanked by his parents, with his boy and girl at either end, one frame per person but with the people next to them showing. I took two or three rolls of each person. I had the film developed at the local professional lab, Chrome, but made the color prints myself in the color lab at Northern Virginia Community College, where I was teaching at the time—they had Durst color enlargers including a massive floorstanding 8x10 and a Hope color processor, very fancy. And of course I needed to make many more than five prints because I needed to see how various combinations of frames worked together. And naturally the five finished prints had to be carefully matched for color and density. It was a lot of work. Then I went to the frame shop where I used to work and cut a mat with five openings, with about half an inch of space between each frame. If you've ever cut your own mats, you know how hard that was, even on a big professional cutter.

But it all worked out wonderfully well, and I was very proud of it. I thought I had arrived at a mature style—I imagined myself continuing to work that way into the future. Five people obviously have ten hands, but I think there were 18 hands showing across the five frames, which added a lot of interest in the way the bodies were interacting. To me it showed "togetherness" better than a single frame might have. And of course shooting one person at a time allowed me to get a great shot of each individual, without compromise, which had been the original aim. 

When I showed up at his house to deliver the piece, however, the lawyer was cuttingly critical of it, for one reason: he was dressed very neatly, but in the picture of him, the tab of his belt overlapped the nearest belt loop on his pants. This is apparently not proper; the part of the belt that sticks past the buckle is supposed to go under the nearest belt loop. He kept asking me why in the world I had not pointed out this sartorial error to him at the time. But that was the first time I even noticed it. And I couldn't see anything wrong with how he looked in any event. His opinion, however, was that the whole piece was ruined by my mistake, and he wanted to pay half what we had agreed. I protested that this would barely cover my expenses, much less my time. I left with no money changing hands. I had to send multiple bills and finally go back to his house weeks later to demand the piece back, but when I did, he had already framed it. Long story short, unless it's too late for that, I ended up taking $300 for it—it was that or nothing. And I had not even made extra prints or a second mat for my own portfolio.

Wasted opportunity indeed. The guy cheated me, but what I was robbed of was actually this: a satisfied client...and, well, encouragement. The piece was really special; it looked great. But the guy never said one nice word about it, or about me. And of course the kids and grandparents were gone. I never heard what they thought of it.

Well, I should have powered through that negative experience and continued to make pictures of multiple people in that style. It really was striking, and, being in color with a black background, it didn't recall Avedon's work at all, even though that's where the underlying idea had come from. It didn't look derivative, even though it kind of was. I think I would have become known for that style, and eventually might have been able to charge more for it. Maybe, eventually, lots more.

John's first novel
Water under the bridge. To be successful, you need self-belief; you need positive energy; you need to throw yourself into working and do the work. That's one of my favorite David Vestal quotes, by the way. Under the heading of advice to photographers, he said, tersely: "Do your work."

And you can't let setbacks defeat you. Everyone experiences setbacks. Over the years, I've noticed, in many personal histories of successful people, that they experienced severe setbacks at one point or another in their lives or careers, but they powered through these negative experiences and went on to success anyway. I used to use the story of David Letterman in talks I gave—he had gotten fired as a local TV weatherman in Indianapolis for saying that a recent storm had left hailstones "the size of canned hams." Unemployed, and dejected, he took stock of his talents and abilities, and—this astonishes me to this day—he concluded that the thing he was best at was making fun of people. This strikes me as a stroke of genius. "Making fun of people" is not something that most people would even think of as an asset, much less consider their greatest asset. But that guided him into standup comedy, which landed him on Carson, and the rest is history. He ended up getting $30 million a year as a late-night host, which makes a TV weatherman's job pale in comparison.

He's just one example. Ford Motor Company was, if memory serves, the fourth car company that Henry Ford tried to start. Wealth advisor Dave Ramsey went bankrupt in his twenties. Our friend John Camp (nom d'artiste: John Sandford) told me he had to write two or three novels before he got the hang of it and sold one. How many people have one finished novel in their drawers or on their hard drive? I'll bet it's a lot. I know a few. The list goes on and on. The point is that in the life stories of many successful people, you come across instances of pronounced early defeats, which they powered past.

I think I'm much more normal, or ordinary—most people, I think, let decisive failures dissuade them from continuing. I think that's how most people react. They think, well, I tried that, and it didn't work, so I'll give up, and with good reason. You can certainly learn from failures and let them influence your course, but if you believe in yourself and can cast a cold eye on your failure, you might even decide to hold the course.

I wish I had*.

Bring the dogs
It's too bad so few young people read TOP! I could give them more good lessons like this. I'd love to play the part of the avuncular old dispenser of pithy wisdom. I might be getting older, but I would never tell young people to get off my lawn. Life is hard; they have my sympathies. More likely, I'd invite them to come by, and to bring their dogs.

Of course I'd warn them that I might go on a bit. As we know, I do go on.  :-)

Mike

*Of course I still could, with my Finger Lakes landscapes.

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Benjamin Marks: "Along these lines, there is a brilliant essay by Bill Watterson, the creator of 'Calvin and Hobbes,' printed as the preface to the collected works by that great master. He talks about his failures on the road to creating the iconic characters...I found it liberating.

"As a corollary, and for those still holding their heads in their hands and saying, 'I will never make it work,' I offer the heartwarming example of the play Cymbeline by our own culture's beloved Wm. Shakespeare. It's absolute cr@p. The plot is non-nonsensical. The author had to stick a whole soliloquy in the final act recapping the plot just to make sure he hadn't lost the audience completely. It is a vivid reminder that only the mediocre are always at their very best. Fail! Fail fast, if you can. And try, try again. When I taught college students (temporarily) I advised many drafts. 'Writing is re-writing. Only Mozart ever got it right in one go.'" 

J.D. Ramsey: "In having dealt with thousands of people in my day job—attorney for 40+ years—you eventually come to recognize that some people you will be forced to represent or deal with are simply toxic individuals. It would not surprise me at all if, for instance, the D.C. attorney you worked for always intended to pay you $300 and simply looked for a reason to do so (if it wasn't the belt, it would have been something else). Some people have a sixth sense about such people, but I never did and got burned from time to time.

"Compartmentalizing those experiences to a reasonable degree so you can move on and be confident in what you know to be good work is a talent worth developing. As is well explained in Bayles' and Orland's iconic book Art and Fear, we all have a voice in our heads ready to tell us we aren't worthy, and all it takes is one toxic personality to trigger it. Self doubt has likely derailed for many what would have otherwise been a wonderfully creative life."

Sroyon: "Re the last section of your post, I'm in my 30s, so...not a young person, but probably younger than the average TOP reader, and I'd like to say I've got a lot out of it.

For example, your post about pushups motivated me to change my own approach to daily habits. I now have a exercise routine which is relatively modest, but I can do it (almost) daily, which is more effective than a more demanding but irregular routine. Similarly with Spanish lessons on Duolingo. I used to 'binge' at times, to reach the highest level or whatever, but then, exhausted by the effort, I'd go days or weeks without doing a lesson. Now I do fewer lessons per day but with more regularity, and I'm making better progress than I did before (Spanish is my fifth language, so it goes to show that even when you have learned multiple languages, there are still things you can learn about learning itself).

"I write for a couple of photography websites, and I've been inspired by (and referenced) some of your articles, e.g. about viewfinders and looking at photographs. And so on.

"So thanks for writing so candidly, especially about some of your mistakes and regrets, which is not easy to do, and not very common among bloggers. But—if you don't mind my two cents' worth as a 'younger reader'—I feel you don't always give yourself enough credit for things you do (or have done) right! Like your contributions to photography magazines in the '90s and blogs in the 2000s, the knowledge base and community of readers that you have created around TOP, and the body of work you are slowly creating in the Finger Lakes. And various challenges that you have in fact powered past.  :-)  "

Comments

[Robert Roaldi]

It would never occur to me that it's the photographer's responsibility to make sure my belt was tucked properly. I'm a little surprised that anyone would care in the first place but that's wrong of me. I know a few people who think that bringing back school uniforms would help to discipline kids. As if we're all in the Marines or something. Same goes for wearing suits at the office, which some people consider mandatory. I guess some people love uniforms. The most lucrative industry of our time, software development, was created by some of the worst slobs who ever lived.

[Matt Kallio]

It's not a good idea to quit after the first endeavor. The first time you make mistakes and do parts in the wrong order and have to backtrack, etc. I find it takes three attempts to get the process down reasonably well. Then I quit.
And I'm pretty sure Avedon would have relished the belt faux pas, and definitely used it.

[Keith]

It's amazing what you don't notice when photographing a group. I was doing a corporate session with 5 people, and totally missed that the one guy had totally messed up tying his tie, so the top wider part was way shorter than the narrow back part. My female assistant missed it as well, because she was focused on the two women that needed scarves and hair tucked and arranged. And of course, the group photo where he looked the best was the one with that tie. Fortunately he left the company very shortly after the session, and they didn't use any photos with him, but there were lots of others they could use.

[Dean Johnston]

Hi.

So, of course, my first thought was this...

https://youtu.be/hYjCbgM87sQ?si=tuv3WucYmzzyJEn2

Cheers,
Dean

[John Krumm]

I'll probably be the 20th person saying that you power through TOP, and we are glad for that. Not everyone is suited to the emotional turmoil of dealing with annoying customers. Perhaps powering through would have just created more misery later, in this case. You might have turned into The Grumpy Photographer, not The Online Photographer.

[Gary Merken]

There are at least 15 portraits you could share without disrespecting those subjects' privacy: the ones published in the school yearbook that year. And any other portraits published in other years' yearbooks.

I know a photographer who makes senior portraits. Always using natural light, and always outdoors, or incorporating elements of buildings with architectural interest (the gothic-style stone breezeway at a local college; a farmhouse from the late 19th century; a horse stable).

Ninety-five percent of his clients are girls. Although he did my son's when he was a senior (and four years later my daughter's). Many of the sessions involve groups of friends. Pairs, trios, even four or five friends in various poses and outfits. He won't book a session unless each subject has a parent in attendance.

I love his work. It's beautiful, sometimes whimsical, and joyful, sometimes deeply introspective. He doesn't sell just one photo of each subject. He'll send each person a collection of 25 to 30 photos. They can choose what they want for their yearbook. And have all the photos.

How do I know all this? Because he regularly shares previews of sessions on Facebook and Instagram. Probably a terrific marketing tool. I'm sure he has his subjects' consent.

In his view, the sessions are more than simply taking a picture for a yearbook. It's a special time with friends and parent(s), a two- to three-hour period out in a field, at the seashore, on the grounds of a college or old stone church, to look back on with fondness.

[darlene]

… frankly, I started losing interest when it became just a production-line sort of thing. It was like I had proven the concept to myself, I knew I could do it, and I wasn't very interested in simply continuing to work, especially when it wasn't on my own terms.

Towards the end of my portrait/wedding/special event business, I told those close to me that I felt like a Xerox machine—just standing there, churning out copies of smiles, handshakes, and cake-cutting moments, while my soul quietly printed, "Get me out of here!" in the margins.

The guy cheated me, but what I was robbed of was actually this: a satisfied client...and, well, encouragement.

Never work without a written contract. All the encouragement in the world won't pay the bills—kind words won't cover your rent. Without that signed agreement, you're just one unpaid invoice away from living the cliché of the starving artist, waiting for "exposure" to finally put food on the table!

You can certainly learn from failures and let them influence your course, but if you believe in yourself and can cast a cold eye on your failure, you might even decide to hold the course.

I learned how to turn negatives into positives, and I'm not talking about film here—though I do that, too. Life hands you setbacks, and just like in the darkroom, you have to develop them into something worth hanging on the wall! Now I just need to figure out how to develop a sense of humor in low light situations!

Lovely musings from Mike's Situational Room, Michael.

[Benjamin Marks]

Along these lines, there is a brilliant essay by Bill Watterson, the creator of Calvin and Hobbes, printed as the preface to the collected works by that great master. He talks about his failures on the road to creating the iconic characters . . . I found it liberating.

As a corollary, and for those still holding their heads in their hands and saying, "I will never make it work," I offer the heartwarming example of the play _Cymbeline_ by our own culture's beloved Wm. Shakespeare. It's absolute cr@p. The plot is non-nonsensical. The author had to stick a whole soliloquy in the final act recapping the plot just to make sure he hadn't lost the audience completely. It is a vivid reminder that only the mediocre are always at their very best.

Fail! Fail fast, if you can. And try, try again. When I taught college students (temporarily) I advised many drafts. "Writing is re-writing. Only Mozart ever got it right in one go."

[J. D. Ramsey]

In having dealt with thousands of people in my day job - attorney for 40+ years - you eventually come to recognize that some people you will be forced to represent or deal with are simply toxic individuals. It would not surprise me at all if, for instance, the D.C. attorney you worked for always intended to pay you $300 and simply looked for a reason to do so (if it wasn't the belt, it would have been something else). Some people have a sixth sense about such people, but I never did and got burned from time to time. To a reasonable degree compartmentalizing those experiences so you can move on and be confident in what you know to be good work is a talent worth developing.

As was well explained in Bayles' and Orland's iconic book Art and Fear, we all have a voice in our heads ready to tell us we aren't worthy and all it takes is one toxic personality to trigger it. Self doubt has likely derailed for many what would have otherwise been a wonderfully creative life.

[Terry Letton]

COD. Cash on delivery, no cash, no delivery! And if they try stopping payment on the check, that’s larceny by check. Remind them of that and your very unlikely to have to press charges, but make sure they believe you will.

[Nikhil Ramkarran]

"[A]vuncular old dispenser of pithy wisdom" 😂

I will be stealing this to use on my interns/students and may or may not credit you. This so perfectly describes the way I feel when I am just generally speaking to them.

I have always thought a teacher is the most remarkable thing anyone could ever be. I wish you could have continued that path more directly, Mike.

You are very good at it, I have learned so much from reading everything you write, photography and life. I hope new people (young and old) keep discovering your writing.

[Dillan]

I don't think I've heard the word "bloviation" before, so I looked it up. It was coined to describe the meandering speeches of president Warren G. Harding. I looked up Harding's Wikipedia page to learn more. William G. McAdoo, Woodrow Wilson's Treasury Secretary, described Harding's speeches as, "an army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea. Sometimes these meandering words actually capture a straggling thought and bear it triumphantly, a prisoner in their midst, until it died of servitude and over work."

I don't think I've ever laughed so hard reading a Wikipedia entry! Thanks for prompting this very entertaining little detour.

[Tony Roberts]

Mike:
Re: Robbed
There a Harris-Trump Time magazine cover sample available at the Daily Beast that illustrates the multi-panel concept (if I have that right). The link is:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-time-cover-shows-kamala-harris-step-into-frame-after-joe-biden-exit

[Peter Conway]

Interesting article in Variety about a Facebook group that some of Lady Gaga’s NYU classmates created years ago titled “Stefani Germanotta, you will never be famous.” (Stefani Germanotta is Gaga’s birth name.)

Talk about ignoring your doubters!

[Moose]

I wonder how much of that persistence is will and how much is an underlying need to do certain things, a drive from somewhere unconscious.

I was recently standing in front of a Van Gough, painted when he was in England. The subject is ordinary, the face of a railroad tunnel and a bit of surroundings. The light was flat, muted; it was probably overcast.

It was nothing like what most of us wuld think of as his sort of painting. I thought, "Why?"

It seems to me possible that he simply had to paint, had to capture the light as it was, could not resist the drive, wherever he was, whatever the subject and light.

That sort of unavoidable persistence would explain how he kept on, in the face of endless rejection, to become an enormous success after his death.

[Moose]

I wonder how much of that persistence is will and how much is an underlying need to do certain things, a drive from somewhere unconscious.

I was recently standing in front of a Van Gough, painted in 1887. The subject is ordinary, a railroad tunnel and a bit of surroundings. The light was flat, muted; it was probably overcast.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtPorn/comments/r82udp/vincent_van_gogh_roadway_with_underpass_1887/?rdt=64403

It was nothing like what most of us would think of as his sort of painting. I thought, "Why?"

It seems to me possible that he simply had to paint, had to capture the light as it was, could not resist the drive, wherever he was, whatever the subject and light.

That sort of unavoidable persistence would explain how he kept on, in the face of endless rejection, to become an enormous success after his death.