It is natural that the use of visual methods in education be concerned with the consent of adults, as the many students are under the age of majority, and as such require the consent of their adult caregivers. What does this consent and integration of consent look like when considering visual methods with young adults? By opening up ownership of a research project from its germination, this alters issues of consent from a traditional formation of an informed consent document, to one of an on-going conversation about the ownership and direction of a project. However, by ceding ownership of a research project, this opens up avenues for failure within research. This essay considers both of these in the context of one research project undertaken with college students exploring issues related to "strong emotions." This project serves educators and researchers in three ways. First, it centers on the experiences of a group of students to better understand the ways they move through systems of post-secondary education. Second, it helps us to reconsider how to engage ethically in visual methods when the positionality of the researcher and the co-researchers, in this case, the photographers, are often potentially and historically at odds. Finally, this essay considers notions of purposeful failure in research as a means to achieving a "moment when the here and now is transcended by a then and a there that could be and indeed should be" (Munoz, 2009, p. 97).