This is the original photo I took of Cafe Du Monde in New Orleans. This is a scanned image from a negative taken in October of 2000. To be truthful, I don’t like this photo and while looking at it, I wonder why I took it at all.
For discussion purposes let’s assume I did not have much time to take a good photo and I wanted to have a photo of Cafe Du Monde. Let’s face it, it is probably on the list of places to visit for a traveler of New Orleans.
Looking at this photo though, there is a lot that I don’t like about it but let me edit it and see what I come up with.
Well, I’m not really pleased with this horizontal edit that much either. The guy on the left who is waiving or hailing for someone is distracting. Towards the middle is the person walking away and it’s a bit, well, it’s not really prize photo worthy.
This portrait framed image is a bit better though. I like that there is more attention to the building and the street lamp in this image. Is the image prize worthy? No. But in this edit, the image is not a total loss either. Let’s face it, compared to the original image, this edited image is much better.
Let’s think about travel photography a bit further though and how we share images. Before the internet and this digital age we are now living in, if we wanted to share our photos many of us had prints made and stored them in photo albums.
Today when we want to share images we post them to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. But we can do something more today than we did in years past.
We can search images on the internet and we can include them in our own story. For example, this artistic rendering is an image I like. With a quick and simple save as command I have the image on my pc and I can include it in a presentation.
Here is another image obtained from a search. This is a pretty good shot that was taken. Even though I did not take the shot it is still a shot that could be used in a personal presentation. In fact, if you are ever in New Orleans and want to photograph Cafe Du Monde you may want to consider walking around and getting that perfect picture for your presentation.
Here is another image obtained from my Google Search. I really like this image on many levels. For me though, it really brings out the feeling of New Orleans not just because of the history and popularity of Cafe Du Monde, but because it incorporates the music of New Orleans.
That same Google search also provided me with this image. Now even though this image is dated it shows a side and history of the building and how it’s changed from then to now. Take some time after reviewing these images to compare for yourself what has changed over time.
Now this image from a scanned postcard can really shed some light on the history and how things change. This was obtained from that same Google search and for me it’s an image I really like a lot. I learned years ago, when you travel, buy postcards and tour books of the areas you visit. And nowadays, purchase travel CD’s and/or DVD’s. If you want to create good travel presentations you’ll be able to do so with your images/video and the local tour info.
One more quick tip ... Get a pic of the coffee and Beignets. Also, most people that visit are will to take a photo of you or you and your family. Make your photo memories special!
This concludes my presentation for today. I hope that it has provided you with ideas for taking photos and creating your own travel presentation.
Enjoy Life, Take Pictures!
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