This shot almost screams “Carnival in Venice”. There is a masked person and, equally important, the Campanile di San Marco and the Palazzo Ducale in the background. Almost everybody in the world would identify this scene at a glance. But there is something fundamentally wrong with this picture.

So, what is wrong with this picture?

Let’s begin with what’s good with this picture. The focus is on the masked person and the background is just slightly blurred, but not so much so that the bell tower and the Doge’s palace become unrecognizable. The red feathers and the intricate pattern of the costume attract the attention of the observer. The warm foreground colors (a yellow gel in front of the flash was used) contrast nicely with the bluish color of the backgorund.

But the white feather on the person’s hat just touches the top of the bell tower and the red feather seems to touch the tower itself. That is not at all satisfactory. Such details are easily overlooked because the viewfinders of modern cameras are so small.

In this case the solution is simple. Just take a small step to the right and there is a sufficiently large space between the feathers and the bell tower.

Photo of a masked person in front of the Campanile di San Marco, Venice, Italy

This is essentially the same picture as the first one (however, regrettably no flash was used in this case, so the lighting is different), but without the problem of the feathers touching the tower.