Here’s a photo I took a few days ago (bigger photo here). I wanted to play with my new olloclip lens.
Olloclip makes really cool lenses that clip on to an iPhone. Mine includes two macro lenses, a wide angle lens, and a fisheye lens. You can buy one here, if you’re interested (they’re pretty cheap).
Anyway, this photo. I took the photo, then realized something looked … funny. I thought there was a smudge on the lens, so I turned the phone around to look at it … and discovered that I had left the lens cap on.
So this is a fisheye lens photo … looking through my olloclip lens cover. Big fail!
And that’s ok. In fact, if you look through my older videos and photos (and website designs, and articles, and project plans, and music projects, etc), you will find lots of experimentation. Some improvements, some trials-and-errors, and yes – some fails.
That’s how I learn – that’s how I improve. I need time to play with a new tool. To figure it out, to make it work, to read about it and try what I just learned.
For me anyway, failure eventually = success. Because every failure leads me a little closer to where I hope to be.
Experimentation is a great way to learn social media, too. For example, if someone doesn’t have a Twitter account, doesn’t understand it, and wants to learn, I’ll suggest these steps:
- Set up a Twitter account.
- Follow 50-100 people. These can be friends, colleagues, or people you share a common interest with (i.e., hobbies, career track, etc).
- Hang out on Twitter for 10 minutes each day. Read the posts, add your thoughts. Share your own posts, focused on your interests.
- Do this for a month.
At the end of the month, I’ll guarantee the person will have a better understanding of Twitter. They might not like it, but they will “get it.”
Hence my photo experiment with the olloclip lens (and lens cap). Experiment, fail, experiment some more, and improve.
How about you? How do you learn and improve?