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Failure can’t always be avoided

. Crying children, uncomfortable models, and technical issues can all stop you from having a creatively fulfilling photoshoot. Even though people and situations are unpredictable, you can have control over what happens. There are things you can do to:

Fix any problem that occurs, no matter how impossible it may seem
Increase your model’s confidence because of your calmness during the incident
Attract more clients thanks to your problem-solving abilities

Below are five scenarios featuring different people and obstacles. Each scenario comes with a few solutions that will keep you grounded and make your subjects feel at home. With these tips in mind, you won’t have to panic the next time you bump into an intimidating problem. Just take a deep breath, remember what you learned, and act like the skilled photographer that you really are.

Take a Break When the Kids Start to Cry

It’s easy for children to lose their patience, especially in the presence of a stranger. If your little model starts to cry or run around, don’t get frustrated. Most importantly, don’t show your frustration. Patience will clear your mind, allow you to find a solution quickly, and show your clients that you’re a tolerant photographer.

If your model is restless, let the entire family take a break. Even if this adds an extra hour to your session, it will be significantly better than continuing and getting highly unflattering results. Once everyone has relaxed (talking and eating always help!) you can safely continue your shoot. If you want to be very hospitable, have a few goodies ready for when your models get tired. They’ll appreciate your thoughtfulness.

When Your Model Looks Uncomfortable, Be Supportive

Feeling left out and incompetent can immediately ruin anyone’s self-confidence. To solve this problem, be open about your past experiences. Make sure your subject feels like a normal individual worthy of being photographed. Don’t let your models bring themselves down. Don’t make it seem like perfection is attainable. What you want is for them to feel their best. Once they do, everything else will fall into place.

Be kind, share funny experiences from the past, try to make them smile, and let them know that making mistakes is okay! If they get the idea that you won’t lose your temper every time they strike the wrong pose, you’ll gain their trust and boost their confidence.

When There’s a Technical Issue, Make Sure You Have Backup Gear

Many wedding photographers stick to this rule like their lives depend on it. Without backup gear, a full-day shoot can turn into a photographer’s worst nightmare. Here are a few things you should have (in addition to your main equipment) in case something breaks:

- Camera body
- Batteries
- Lenses
- Lens filters
- Memory cards

If you’d like to find out more about backup gear, check out this article.

Prepare Lighting Equipment in Case the Weather Gets Bad

Make sure you check the weather forecast before you plan a shoot. If the weather isn’t promising and you can’t afford to postpone your shoot, bring an umbrella and a reflector to the location. An umbrella will keep you, your equipment, and your clients dry during an unexpected storm; a reflector will enhance your subjects’ faces on an overcast day.

In addition to bringing helpful equipment, make sure there’s a building nearby where you could stay during a storm. The last thing you want is to make your clients feel unsafe. Knowing what to do and where to go will save you from a lot of unnecessary misunderstandings in the future.

Photography, like any other job, has the potential to throw you into a pit of annoying mistakes. Don’t let this trouble you. Knowing how to deal with problems will help you focus on what matters most: taking incredible photographs of incredible people. Being prepared may not completely eliminate failure, but it will definitely keep you happy, sane, and positive. That, dear reader, is how you deserve to feel.

Failure is inevitable, especially in the world of art. It may be difficult to grasp this immediately; an innumerable amount of ideas float in artists’ minds every day, making it hard to store one concept without losing another. Photographers not only want to make the most of every precious thought but work on it successfully. This state of mind can be very overwhelming, especially if hours of hard work end up amounting to nothing. At one point, these artists may start to wonder if embracing other ideas would’ve given them better results.

The truth, however, remains stable. Ideas that appear in the form of unclear yet exciting dreams can’t be perfect. They shouldn’t be. Experience, practice, and success can stop failure from occurring too often, but they won’t obliterate it completely. Whether you recently discovered photography or entered your twentieth year of photo-taking, you have every right to fail. Here is why.

It Will Give You a Reason to Strengthen Your Patience

In today’s fast-moving world, it’s easy to seek instant gratification everywhere. Social media is filled with notifications, updates, and feedback that motivate people to receive answers within seconds. More often than not, scrolling through your feed is easier than finding new ways to improve. Similarly, it’s easier to bring yourself down than to pick yourself up. While social media can be very handy, it makes patience a difficult skill to obtain.

Failure won’t provide you with immediate satisfaction, but it will open a new door for your patience. Just because a concept didn’t work out doesn’t mean you should give up on it completely. Analyze the problem and try to find a solution for it. This will not only strengthen your problem-solving skills but significantly improve your patience with both art and yourself.

It Will Show You That You’re Not Always the Problem

You’re really not always the problem

. Photographers of all kinds often bump into unpredictable obstacles. Bad moods, people, the weather, time constraints, and other external factors can have a significant impact on your work. Creative mistakes don’t make you unworthy, untalented, or undeserving of personal success. Keep this in mind when something goes wrong again.

Tip: When you feel like a failure, remember your past achievements and current strengths. If that doesn’t work, go to your friends and family for support. You can even do both at the same time. These acts of self-love will give you a small yet significant boost of confidence.

It Will Allow You to Start Over Successfully

Any creative project, regardless of its success, changes an artist. Using your new experience, you can work on the same projects with an improved mindset. Previous mistakes will come in handy and give you more room to learn and to grow. You won’t face the same problems because you’ll be an improved version of yourself.

By starting over, you’ll strengthen your perseverance, a skill that’s highly valued in every workplace. The next time you bump into an unpleasant problem, treat it like an opportunity to get better at living. What you learn from your creative mistakes will help you in other areas of your life. Perseverance and patience will improve your relationships, strengthen your reputation, and increase your self-confidence.

Most Importantly, It Will Make You Brave

Failure isn’t a creativity-obliterating beast or an unstoppable negative force. It’s not a person whose goal is to spite you. It’s not even a reflection of your incompetence as a photographer. In reality, failure is the perfect excuse to get up and try again. It can be seen as a friend who willingly points out your mistakes and gives you another chance to start all over again. The sooner you realize this, the sooner you’ll find your own courage. Though this courage won’t entirely eliminate your fear of failure, it will stop you from letting mistakes bring you down.

Failure is meant to help you improve as an artist. Instead of thinking of it as the end of the world, look at it as the beginning of a new creative chapter. Failure, it turns out, is just a bunch of wonderful opportunities in disguise, so go out there and embrace them.

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