Photographers: mistakes improved work

Six photographers and videographers have shared how technical mistakes improved their work. The conversations were held at Sony's Kando event, as reported by DPReview.

Sarina Soriano, a senior producer and director of photography for the San Francisco 49ers, described an unintended camera setting. She accidentally used a high shutter speed for a video. Soriano said she was able to slow the footage down in DaVinci Resolve software, creating what she called an "epic"look. ## Embracing unintended settings

Nate Luebbe, a landscape and wildlife photographer, found value in a slow shutter speed error."Every now and then, a little bit of motion blur can tell a good story about an animal that's moving fast," Luebbe explained. He cited an image from Katmai National Park where a slow shutter added motion to water while bears stood still, adding depth to the scene.

Dani Hamm, an adventure and wildlife photographer, pointed to accidental overexposure. She said overexposing an image resulted in a high-key photo. The blown-out background removed context, isolating the animal. Hamm now intentionally creates high-key images.

Errors leading to new projects

Nancy Borowick, a documentary photographer, made a captioning error early in her career. While covering the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, she realized she had the dog's name but not the owner's. Borowick found the owner online, who was also named Nancy. The two became friends after two hours of messaging.

This mistake led to permission to photograph the owner, her wife, and their golden retrievers at home. It evolved into a long-term project called Part of the Pack. The series documents relationships between dogs and the people who breed, own, and show them. "Caption information is so important," Borowick said, "but on occasion, mistakes lead to happy accidents and long-term projects."## Missed focus and format surprises

Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Jabin Botsford recounted a moment of missed focus."It looked kind of like it was coming out of his mouth," he said.

Travel photographer Allison Anderson's mistake took a decade to pay off. Early in her career, she shot everything in JPEG to save space. During a trip to Italy, her camera was accidentally set to shoot Raw files. Anderson was annoyed by the large file sizes and stored the images on a hard drive. Ten years later, she revisited those Raw files. She was able to edit one image, which is now printed large and hangs over her fireplace.