A QUICK GUIDE TO CRAFT REALITY-BUSTING PICTURES
A beautiful ancient grand temple shrouded in mystery and lost in time. Lost to all but a single young Buddhist monk and yours truly who just “happened” to discover it all by mistake.
Bullshit!
This is Angkor Watt, Cambodia’s main tourist attraction. About 10,000 visitors “discover” it every single day, including the same day I took this picture.
Yes, we all may secretly harbor the desire to discover something truly grand and tell the world about it. Play Indiana Jones in our own private epic cinema. The trouble is, there aren’t that many places left to discover. The age of consumer tourism has made most of this world’s spectacles as available to today’s travelers as visiting the next city was to our ancestors not more than 100 years ago.
So how can we still create a picture that defies the crowds? A photo that provides that rare (and false) feeling of pristine, unspoiled experience?
Here is how
1. Choose the right location
Metaphorically speaking, we are all goats – plodding our lives comfortably inside one big mob. Call it herd mentality, call it laziness or lack of originality. Doesn’t matter. That’s the way we are wired. That’s why I went to visit a site frequented by almost 2.5 million visitors annually. To defy the crowds however you need first to separate yourselves from them – not metaphorically, physically. In this case, while 90 something percent of the visitors keep themselves to the path, I (bravely) went about 30 meters off it. You wouldn’t believe what a little stray off the beaten path can do. Look at the congestion on the far right edge of the image to understand how much a little detour can do.
2. Choose the right angle.
Deciding what to frame in the picture is also a decision what to frame out. Tilting your camera just a degree or two could make or break the illusion. Nobody will ever see the hordes that were left out of the frame. In this particular case, the sheer mass of visitors walking on the main path just off the right edge.
3. Choose the right timing
Yes, I know “timing is everything” is the mother of all corny clichés. But it is there for a reason. It is a true cliché – damn true!
No one will ever know that 10 seconds before the shot was taken a whole school bus of annoying kids obscured the whole scenery. Being patient (and lucky) could also mean you can have the best of both worlds. In this specific case, get the teenagers out of the picture AND have this young monk to pose for you.
Which brings me to the last point.
4. When all else fails, choose Photoshop
I admit this tip is almost as bad as cheating on your mistress. But, heck, nobody’s perfect, right?
Let me share a little secret; the original had the little monk eyes looking at the other direction. I rearranged his irises to look at me. I guess you can do a lot worse than this. Still, if you do all above three tips right, most likely you’d never need trick #4.