Failure

This post is going to be about failure... This is about quitting and giving up. This is about managing defeat, disappointment and unmet expectations.

This is going to be - hopefully only slightly - depressing, because it is also about depression, anxiety and impostor syndrome.

Lovely vibes, eh? Now that I’ve doomed this blog post to SEO hell, let’s talk.

But first, a bit of housekeeping, since a few updates are due, in no particular order.

1. Although I’m on record having recently said I would be ending my Squarespace subscription and thus shutting down my website mostly due to high upkeep costs, especially seeing how the site manages to produce absolutely nothing as far as revenue and only extremely little traffic. I have given glass.photo a try and I have also considered some alternatives for my blog, because on the one hand I do need a place other than Instagram to show my photos and on the other hand I do like to write and publish these posts online. However, after a bit of math, I’ve realized that at the end of the day, yearly costs for a photo sharing app/platform and a blog would not be much lower than keeping a Squarespace subscription. So, with that in mind, I have decided to reactivate my Squarespace subscription and thus my website. While keeping it up is 100% expenses, and all out of pocket, the little money I make with YouTube does serve to somehwhat compensate for this expense. Furthermore, I love having my own corner of the internet, away from rigged algorithms and popularity contests of sites like Instagram and others. Finally, I have created the discount code 60KWORDS that you can use at checkout to apply a 60% discount on top of an already existing, automatically applied 50% site-wide discount, so have a look at my gallery, read my blog and consider buying a print, or three. Thank you muchly!

2. You might remember this video and the two challenges I said I would try in 2026. I have already spoken about how I failed, or I should say, I quit one of them by day two. It was something I really didn’t think through and while in all actuality I did basically only ever use one lens all this time, there were a couple of occasions when for about a couple of hours each time, due to really bad weather I took out my weather sealed fujicron. You see, this is the whole point. This self-imposed restriction, while meaning well, turned out to be unreasonable and unfeasible. I mean, if I only had one lens... sure I would make do with just that, but since I do have several others, I think the smartest thing to do is to use each according to their strengths and weaknesses. And furthermore, I’m not really a heavy lens-switcher. When I find a lens I really like, I do tend to naturally use only that particular one for a long time, so this challenge tried to solve a problem that doesn’t exist, while creating others. So, yeah... not very well thought out.

   Neither was the other challenge to be quite frank... I said I would try to go through the whole of 2026 without buying any more tech. I think I lasted for a week before I failed, nay before I gave up. It’s early March at the time of writing this and as of making that video I have purchased a pair of SteelSeries headphones for my PS5, which I have since returned in order to buy a pair of Razer BlackShark V3 X Hyperspeed. I have also bought and since returned a 24-inch LG UltraGear and a flexible arm desk stand for it, to use as an external monitor to my laptop, but I felt like it just added unneeded complexity to my setup and at the same time created issues I didn’t need while trying to solve problems I didn’t have. So, I ended up returning those, too.

   And then, there’s the Thypoch Simera 28mm f/1.4. I had wanted a Thypoch lens ever since they came out a couple of years ago and I finally bought one. It’s the most expensive lens I own, having set me back almost €600, import duties included, but I’m happy I got. It looks gorgeous, feels incredible, works beautifully and makes charming images. More on this in an up-coming lens review.

Now let’s get into the weeds of it, let’s talk about failure.

I want to approach this from two directions. I will talk about a particular project I had that failed, nay I gave up on and I also want to address the subject of failure from a general point of view.

You may remember me talking about my project documenting bread-making, bakeries and the bakers. It's a project that's very close and dear to my heart. I've been fascinated by bread and everything around it since I was a child. On top of it, I've been baking my own bread at home for a few months now, so that should suffice in order to drive the point home - this is a passion project through and through.

Long story short, this project had me going around town, visiting local bakeries, making photographs and eventually publishing a book. Easy right? I estimated around 50-80 images total and with a success rate of around three to five good, book-worthy images per bakery, which require two if not several visits to a single place. The math is simple, but disheartening - I would need to be able to visit at least five but likely closer to eight, if not even ten different bakeries. I had my work cut out for me…

An initial round of cold approaches via email resulted in a single reply to the tone of "Sounds nice. I'm away on vacation; we'll talk when I get back" and not even a response from all the other about a dozen or so bakeries I wrote to. And even this one that did get back to me, amounted to nothing because we never talked. I wrote again a couple of weeks later but got no response.

About a year in and my project was dead on arrival, so I decided I would call it a failure and give it up, but since it was something so important to me, I was uneasy with such a conclusion. That’s why a few months later I thought I'd give it another chance. I was able to make a few visits to a local bakery, but only because the owner is my godfather's son, so we're practically family. I decided I would make a zine with the images I shot there, spend a bit of money to print two dozen copies and try to approach things differently. I imagined walking in all these places, zine in hand, being an actual person, a human being with a face and a voice, rather than just an email would make things so much easier. Boy, was I wrong!

So, I started going to bakeries around town. I would ask to speak to the owner, hand them a zine and a business card and explain what my project was all about. I got a lot of polite we'll-call-you’s, but nobody ever did. Fast forward to about a couple of weeks ago when I walked into this artisanal bakery with rather high hopes. I thought to myself this was going to be it. This particular bakery is kind of high end, they make really good, really expensive bread, they’re new on the market, and even the name has art in it. ART… ARTISANAL… Boy, was wrong! Again. The owner flat out refused, with just a very brief, cursory glance at the zine. I don’t think she looked at more than a couple of pages. I didn’t even get the chance to finished my pitch, a very short one at that, before she was already sayin no. When I asked why, she said, and I quote: “I don’t like this kind of exposure.” I was very surprised, I was basically offering free publicity, but hey, what do I know?!

One thing I did know, though, right there and then. I knew I had had enough rejection and quite enough failure. I was ready to quit this project. This time for good. I felt spent. I had given it as much as I could, and frankly that meant a lot more time, energy and as I would eventually come to learn, more money than I had ever thought it would take. I had had enough. Even if I were to hear back from some of those that said would call back, I would need at least five to eight, if not more call-backs for this project to work and judging by my previous experience, this felt entirely implausible. So, I gave up on that project altogether.

It had gotten to a place where it took too much of me to keep it alive, almost forcefully so. It felt easier to just let it go. I was spending too much time, energy and money on something that had no likelihood of success. And when I did let it go I felt such a relief, it was definitely a weight off my shoulders. However, there was also grief and frustration at the thought of having quit. The feeling of failure was weighing me down, so much so that I began doubting everything about myself as a photographer. The devil started feeding dark thoughts into my head. “Maybe I've peaked”, “maybe this is about as much as I can do”, which isn't a lot if we're being frank. “Maybe it's about time I give it all up”. So, I started thinking of selling my entire photography kit. I imagined I would just by a compact camera, maybe a Fuji X30, or some Sony RX100 to have for family stuff and then admit photography had defeated me.

This was not something I thought lightly of, but it had come at a really bad time, in the context of having done nothing worthwhile in photography since months ago. This winter had been particularly tough on me. Winter is always hard; I'm one that enjoys the warm light of long summer days. I really struggle with the cold, dark, dreary days of winter. I always did very little good work in winter, but this one had been particularly long, dark and dreary and throughout the winter I managed to find little to no motivation to go out and shoot. I can remember several consecutive instances where I did go out only to not even make it more than a couple of hours before going back home with cards empty and tail between my legs. It had gotten to a point where this developed into somewhat of a trauma. I began feeling literally scared and worried of going out and coming back with nothing, so much so that I just didn't anymore. The pressure to perform, the toll of repeated failure weighed heavily and I simply couldn't muster enough mental energy to motivate myself. I felt depressed and anxious just thinking about going out to take photos. So, I stopped doing it altogether. Every time opportunity would present itself and I had a free afternoon, or some time for myself I would just stay home and play Assassin's Creed Valhalla on my Playstation. But that made me feel even guiltier still, so I didn't even enjoy that.

Then I began brooding. Thoughts darker and crazier still started trying to convince me I had reached the end of this road.

You see, I have had a creative side ever since I can remember having any coherent thoughts and I have always felt a very strong need and desire to express myself creatively. From about age ten or twelve to my first year of college I used to write a lot. Mostly journaling and poetry, but I also tried my hand at some theater and short stories. In high school I started writing a novel, but I never finished it. Then I stopped writing entirely. That's a decade of writing right there. After that, I began making electronic music on the computer and dj-ing at parties and festivals. I had a few of my songs published, I had developed a style, a bit of a following, only to realize a decade later, very early in my thirties, that I had reached a plateau and it became obvious I was never going to get any better at that. So, I quit that too. Another decade there.

Now you see how well the timeline fits? While I had been taking pictures of strangers on the street and in public transport for years prior, I was using my phone and had now idea what street photography was and that that was what I was basically doing, it's exactly ten years ago this year when I decided I would start taking photography seriously.

A decade for every endeavour. Maybe my spirit animal is the quitter. Maybe it's just who I am - a quitter. Maybe there really is nothing I can fully see through. Maybe my creative, artistic endeavours are just temporary whims I distract myself with from the fact that I am a quitter. Maybe I'm just an impostor, someone who has pretended to be an artist all his life. First a writer, then a musician, now a photographer.

Dark, depressing thoughts... but thoughts I couldn't ignore as it all seemed to make sense, the timing fit, the failure was real and It felt like a sentence.

Then spring came. Quite literally and also figuratively. The very week the rain went away and the sun started shining throughout most of the day, every day, my mood improved significantly and I suddenly felt motivated to do photography again. And just like it had never even left me, inspiration struck and I started making pictures I liked again. And it felt easy and effortless, natural and familiar. It’s almost like this is who I am and I had merely forgotten. Were you to go to any of my social media pages, you’d see the way I describe myself in the biography section is with three nouns: husband, father, photographer. Sure, sometimes I jest and add “Linux enthusiast” in there. I have also been known to use “beer afficionado”, to describe myself, jokingly or not...

My point is and the moral of this story is perhaps that I’m happy I didn’t quit. And frankly, I doubt that it’s even something I could do, because photography is not merely something that I do, it’s something that I am. Photography is not my hobby, it’s who I am. It’s the only way I know that alleviates the pain of the passing of time, the losing of loved ones, the getting old, the forgetting of people, places and times.

The way I see it, photography is the antidote to death.