- On this week’s edition of my first travel photos, we look at
SCULPTURES
Sculptures are timeless, classic, and sometimes make beautiful photos.
But not this time…
Low contrast, blown out sky, and weird, slanted angle makes this photo awesome….awesomely bad!
I zoomed in for this, which makes it better, but the sky is still all blown out, and the contrast is still quite low, making this statue look rather dull and silly, not powerful and stoic.
Do you know what is wrong with all three of these statues? If you said they are blurry and taken at a HORRIBLE angle – YOU ARE RIGHT!
These photos are also part of the “Horrible Tourist” film rolls. We jumped on the back of a German tour in Dubrovnik, Croatia, and every time the group looked up, ‘ooohing’ and ‘aaahing’ and snapping photos, I’d point my camera in the same directions and snap without looking. It ended up being hilariously fun, and I ended up with 3 horrible rolls of film. Ok, I had A LOT more horrible rolls..but these ones were on purpose. I swear.
But if you keep looking, these ‘purposely bad’ photos are still not the worse….
If you are ever in a church, and not allowed to use flash, the best thing you can do, is hold the camera in your hand, and take a long-shutter exposure. Because blurry is so much easier than carrying a tripod.
Backlighting is beautiful! Or backlighting is not beautiful. It was one of those. I wish I could remember which….
You don’t need the bottom of the statue when you have low-contrast and a SUPER light background. And don’t forget to add random people. Random people rule!
Beautiful memorial wall of some sort?
Keep the mystery alive by backing way up, and making the words barely visible in the morning light. Because who wants to REALLY know what this is all about anyway?
Blurry, overexposed, and cropped funny – it’s the trifecta of how NOT to take a photo!
So here are some of the many styles of brilliantly horrible statue photography out there. Seems I’m just awesome enough to have spanned the spectrum of badness. Go me!
Stay tuned for next weeks My First Travel Photos, and don’t forget to check out the post that started it all:
My First Travel Photos – People
Cheers!
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About Dani Blanchette
I am a freelance travel and music photographer and creator of GoingNomadic.com.
I love music, food, and exploring cities without guidebooks. I’ve flown a helicopter, hitchhiked down the east coast USA, and once snuck into the back of a zoo (in Serbia) and pet a lion.
I am always up for an adventure, and sometimes I videotape them.