The Mountains Taught Me How To Turn Failure Into Success
as always, the full gallery is at the bottom, so skip there if you don’t care about the words
Before sunrise on Mount Shasta, I had my hands on Scott's shoulders to keep him from blowing off the mountain.
That is not an exaggeration.
We were somewhere on the upper mountain in the dark, wind screaming across exposed rock, sand and grit kicking up into our eyes. I wear contacts. My eyes were bloodshot and watering and I could barely see. And Scott, weighing 60 lbs less than me, shouted, “watch this…” spread his arms out, and the wind just lifted him.
He looked at me. I looked at him.
We both laughed, but also recognized something needed to be done, so we looked for some shelter to reassess.
Scott and I had no business attempting all of California's 14,000-foot peaks in a single push. But, we taped maps together, flipped through a guidebook so thick it read like a textbook, and overpacked for what we were calling our first expedition. We had five hundred dollars between us, a shared van, and a diet that consisted almost entirely of canned refried beans eaten cold and instant rice.
We were broke. We were inexperienced. And we were absolutely going to climb every single one of those mountains.
The plan was simple: start in late August, work our way south through all 15 of them, summit each one. Done.
We failed on the first mountain.
Here’s What Lives In My Gear Bag:
Sony a7r4; my work horse
Sony a7s3; mostly for video work like solo-filmmaking documentary
Tamron 16-30; probably my favorite lens right now
Tamron 28-75; I think this is the best all around focal length
Tamron 70-180; I don’t use this a ton, but it’s a great lens
We hid in our “cave” for about an hour, but the wind never let up, so we went back to camp. We made tea, which is what Scott and I do when we don't know what else to do. We talked. We ate all our food we packed in. And then, without really discussing it, we packed up, drove away, and crossed Shasta off the list.
Not as a summit, but as an attempt.
At the time, in my head, that meant failure. The thinking was simple: you either reach the summit or you don't. We didn't. Move on.
It took me years to understand how wrong that was. Today, I would have stayed on the mountain. I would have waited out the weather, assessed conditions the next morning, and tried again when the window opened. A failed summit push is not a failed expedition. Weather turns. Windows open. The mountain isn't going anywhere.
But I didn't know that yet. Nobody had taught me, and I hadn't learned it myself.
So we left.
Ansel Adams coined the Eastern Sierra the “Range of Light” and for all those who venture into the glacial carved range, they will surely agree. In the mornings, the light bounces off the east-facing walls and for sunset, the west-facing aspects glow in a golden light. Hues that range from burnt orange to purple are often a single frame. The views are unparalleled to any I have experienced thus far.
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What I was really doing on that trip had very little to do with summits.
I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I was trying to learn how to be an expedition photographer. I wanted to know what it felt like to plan something hard, commit to it, and see what happened when reality didn't cooperate. The mountains were my classroom, and I was paying tuition in canned beans and sleepless nights on a mountainside from poor planning.
Shasta taught me the first real lesson: all-or-nothing thinking is expensive in the mountains, and in life.
You don't have to succeed on the first try. You don't have to summit every peak to make the trip worth something. You can fail at the thing you set out to do and still come back with something more valuable than a photograph on the summit.
We ended up summiting ten or eleven of the California 14ers that fall in two blocks across a couple of months.
Scott got altitude sickness on a few and couldn't join. We ate beans every single day and drank good tea because that was the one thing we refused to compromise on.
And when it was over, I went back to substitute teaching for almost a year while I pitched story ideas, submitted images, and hoped to turn that trip into something.
Thank you for reading this journal entry. If you have enjoyed it and have something to add, send me an email: dj@dalton-johnson.com
✌️
Trip Gallery
About Dalton:
Dalton Johnson is a photographer, direcot, and writer (award-winning at all three) based in South Lake Tahoe, CA.
Over the last 10 years, Dalton’s creative work has taken him to every continent, above the arctic circle, and below the antarctic circle.
I Didn't Know Anything And That's Why It Worked.
as always, the full gallery is at the bottom, so skip there if you don’t care about the words
The first time I pointed a camera at a surfer, I didn't know his name.
I didn't know if he was good or bad. I didn't know what the wave was called, whether it was a point break or a beach break, or what the difference even meant. I couldn't have named a single professional surfer if you'd asked me. I didn't know the WSL existed.
What I knew was this: I wanted to be at the beach and I enjoyed taking photos.
The ocean has a way of making you feel like you belong there before you've earned it. The light does something in the late afternoon — it turns everything amber and slow, and even on a mediocre day with average surf and no one watching, it looks like a photograph. I showed up with a camera and no idea what I was doing, and the place just absorbed me.
I was too shy to ask anyone for anything. I didn't introduce myself to surfers, didn't explain what I was shooting or why, didn't pitch anything to anyone. I just showed up, walked to the water, and made pictures.
Every single day.
Not because I was disciplined or because I had a plan. I showed up every day because it made me happy in a way I didn't have language for yet. The beach didn't matter — I would have been just as content at a crummy stretch of shore with knee-high waves as a day at Mavericks in Half Moon Bay. The surfer didn't matter. The wave, famous or not, didn't matter.
What mattered was the feeling of paying attention to something beautiful and trying to hold onto it.
That's what the camera gave me in those early months. Not a career, nor a skill set, nor a brand on my client list.
Just a reason to show up and enjoy the beauty.
Here’s What Lives In My Gear Bag:
Sony a7r4; my work horse
Sony a7s3; mostly for video work like solo-filmmaking documentary
Tamron 16-30; probably my favorite lens right now
Tamron 28-75; I think this is the best all around focal length
Tamron 70-180; I don’t use this a ton, but it’s a great lens
Looking back at the frames from that first year, what strikes me most is how editorial they are — not in a deliberate way, but in the way that happens when you're too inexperienced to think commercially. I wasn't thinking about what a client would want. I wasn't thinking about licensing or usage rights or whether the image was "on brand." I was just trying to make something that felt true to what I was seeing.
It turns out that instinct — shooting like a storyteller before you know you're a storyteller — becomes the foundation of everything else.
My career as a commercial lifestyle and photographer came later. The clients, the assignments, visiting all seven continents for work. All of it came later. But, the approach to most of my work was built in Santa Cruz, in the water or standing on the cliff, on days when nobody was watching and nothing was at stake.
I didn't know anything starting out. Not in a tongue-in-cheek way — I mean I genuinely knew nothing about photography, filmmaking, writing, making money, or even who I was supposed to be talking to.
But I knew what brought me joy.
And that, it turns out, was enough to start.
Keep scratching the creative itch. You never know where it leads.
PS thank you for reading this. If you have enjoyed this journal entry and have something to say, send me an email to say hey: dj@dalton-johnson.com
✌️
Photo Gallery
About Dalton:
Dalton Johnson is a photographer, direcot, and writer (award-winning at all three) based in South Lake Tahoe, CA.
Over the last 10 years, Dalton’s creative work has taken him to every continent, above the arctic circle, and below the antarctic circle.