Your Favourite Travel Photo Might Be the Blurry One
There is a difference between looking good in a photograph and wanting to keep looking at it.
You stop while scrolling through the trip photos. Someone has her eyes closed. Hair has escaped its arrangement. A stranger’s bag has wandered into the edge of the frame.
Somehow, you do not want to delete it.
The next photo is much better. Good expressions, a tidy background. Yet you go back to the first. You remember what everyone was laughing about. That probably explains the slight blur too: the person taking the photograph was laughing with you.
Just before everybody looks at the camera
A beautiful photograph is a pleasure. But every moment of a trip does not need the same expression. Capture a friend studying a menu, tilting her head at something in a shop, or pointing in one direction while someone else confidently points in another.
Photographs without faces belong in the collection too. Two cups on a table. Different objects chosen in the same colour. Shoes left side by side. Later, these can remind you not only where you went, but how you spent time together.
For once, replace “Make me look good” with a different request: “Take a picture when I look like I’m having fun.” It is harder to prepare a pose for that, which makes it interesting.
In a photo booth, the prepared poses run out first
Seongsu’s self-photo booths appear in Seoul’s official travel guide as an experience to enjoy with friends, with different concepts to choose from. [1]
At first, everybody smiles sensibly. Then somebody suggests a pose. Opinions begin to differ. The countdown starts while you are still deciding what to do with your hands. Looking at the results, the frame where everyone gave up and laughed may beat the one you carefully prepared.
While choosing a strip, ask “Which one feels most like us?” rather than “Who looks best?” You are choosing a shared moment, not scoring everybody’s face.
Being in a photograph together does not mean everybody wants it posted. Show your friends before sharing and check that they are comfortable. They may prefer not to reveal their location or a beauty experience.
With that understood, taking photographs can feel a little more relaxed. Not every image is waiting to become a post. One passed around only between friends can be a perfectly good result.
Back home, choose two photographs to stand for the trip. One that looks wonderful to anyone who sees it. Another that needs no explanation for the people who were there.
There is no urgent need to fix the second one when it is slightly blurred. That may be where the laughter got in.
Sources
Images are editorial photographs from Unsplash, not guest photographs or verified depictions of named venues or products. Photos: Omar Lopez, Aphrodites daughter, Garvit Nama on Unsplash.