I stood at the street corner, feeling all kinds of foolish as I pointed my camera at a fetching sight. Why did this feel so awkward?

It was our first day in New Mexico, and it was also my first time being alone in a foreign place. James had asked me to come along with him to Santa Fe so that I could enjoy some change of scenery while he attended a leadership conference. "You can walk the town and explore while I'm in meetings," he suggested. I was all on board, excited even. What a chance to practice taking pictures of something besides the inside of our apartment!

What I didn't realize was how hard it would be. After James kissed me farewell and I ventured out into the streets of Santa Fe, I found myself oozing with self-consciousness. I traipsed aimlessly along miles of sidewalk, feeling the weight of expectation whenever I stopped to take a Shot. Sometimes I didn't even take the camera out of my backpack because when I did, I could feel the curious eyes of strangers all around me. Dealing with that kind of self-consciousness while also hunting down good light and composing a decent shot was proving massively difficult.

Here's where I feel the need to stop and apologize to all my past students. Before this year, I never fully appreciated how scary it is to practice something brand new, especially in front of others. I'm sure some students start the day thinking to themselves, 'Let's try and get through today without making a fool of ourselves!' But then the teacher comes up with an assignment, forcing you to try something that's completely new, hard, or creative. Even worse, they expect you to get up in front of other people and practice.

"We're all friends here!" we teachers like to tell students, especially the shy ones. "Don't worry about making mistakes. It's how everybody learns!"

Well I ask you this. When's the last time a teacher felt okay with getting up in front of thirty or so of their peers and possibly falling flat on their face - literally or otherwise?

Because I felt that this weekend. Whenever I put my eye to the viewfinder of my camera in public, I could see others following the dotted line from my lens to the view it was probably capturing. I got caught wondering if they, too, thought it was a worthwhile view. When I finished taking the picture and the raw image was previewed on my camera screen, I could see passersby glancing over my shoulder, trying to get a glimpse of the final shot. Some would nod with approval and even copy the same shot with their cameraphone, which flooded me with sudden pleasure, but then I felt silly. Why should I care so much about what others thought?

Taking risks - whether as a five-year-old student or a thirty-nine year old student - is hard.

We have pedestals galore for all the experts who made it - the star athletes in their prime, the musicians at their peak, people who are at the top of their game.

But how come we never see the struggle that got them there? Where are the photographers' blurry practice shots? The cringey mistakes that led to their peak performance? When do we ever peek into an artist's trash bin to see all the mistakes and foibles that eventually made them better? For once, I'd like to see the messiness of Learning immortalized more than the final expertise, just so that I wouldn't have to feel like I'm the only one who bungles this up constantly while trying my hand at something new.

I, for one, would love to comb through DaVinci's refuse pile to understand how many bombs and boo-boos led to his brilliance.

I made this blog as a way of taking notes on this sabbatical, and I'd hate for it to become a place where I only present an array of fully-formed expertises. That's not what learning looks like.

Learning often looks like stumbling and falling - in the most inelegant ways. Learning looks like me absolutely butchering French words like quatre, immeuble, and écureuil. (That last one means 'squirrel'. I'd be all too happy to never meet a squirrel in Paris so that I never have to try and say that crazy string of vowels in public). Learning looks like taking a hundred different photographs and finding only a few gems worth editing. It also means being vulnerable when sharing that journey with others, so that they don't get the wrong idea about what learning looks like in my shoes.

The last time I was in James' office, he had this book displayed on his desk. An art teacher in one of my previous schools read it to her students on the very first days of school. She, too, encountered too many students who were crippled by the fear of messing up. She used Beautiful Oops to remind them that the spills, smears, and smudges were the very portals to their learning and growth as artists. When I flipped through it, it made me think of how important it is to reframe all the oops as helpful rungs of an upward ladder, rather than as mistakes to hide from others.

With that in mind, I thought I'd share a few of my before/after shots while taking pictures in New Mexico. I had a ton of befores! These were shots that had a ton of things wrong with them - poor lighting, overexposed whites, too many shadows, fuzzy focus.

But in photography - as it is with life - I believe the best mistakes are the redeemable ones. So I've been using my camera mistakes as an opportunity to practice some photo editing. Sometimes treasuring the contents of our trash bin is the best way to learn.

So without further ado, here are some of my favorite oops shots from beautiful Santa Fe -