How To Photograph Sculptures in Singapore and Worldwide

Singapore sculpture. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I like the way the orange figures on the sculpture co-ordinate with the orange barriers and the bus.  The green figures go with the greenery of the almost triangular foliage of the tree front right as well as the grass front left.

Problem
Do you take a tour of sculptures or just stop and photograph them as you pass?

Answer
You can take photos of your favourite sculptures through the different weather and seasons. Or wait for good weather and photograph as much as possible.

On a rainy day to protect your camera, your shoes, and get pictures not spoiled by rain on the lens, go for the indoor sculptures and those in the open air but shielded by a roof.

I take four or six pictures:
1 Distance so that I can see how to walk or drive to reach the sculpture and recognize the surroundings as I approach.

2 Close up to show more detail of the sculpture, with background buildings out of focus or cut.

3 Back or side view of the sculpture to show the depth, the different features at the back, and different surroundings if I want to use different pictures in different blog posts.

4 Any plaque giving the name of the sculpture and the sculptor and history. Even if I think it's too dull as a picture, the information will be useful for my caption. Checking the last of the photos is quicker than looking up the sculpture in Wikipedia and being distracted every time I add a caption.

5 Add myself, to prove I was there and have not merely lifted a picture from Wikipedia. A second advantage is that adding a human figure adds scale.

6 Add another person, a passer-by. If I can, I stop a local person, such as a Chinese face in Singapore. I ask, "What do you think of the sculpture?" "Do you love it or hate it?"

The text could add information.

Ideally, I can make the comment fit the face of the speaker. For example, admiring the sculpture "loved by local shopkeeper", frowning "waste of money", even ignoring it and my attempts to stop them - "scurry past without a glance".

On the other hand, an obvious tourist will do, but for a different caption, such as "what I like about Singapore," or, "never seen anything like it".

Our son, who is an SEO expert, tells me that if I duplicate a travel post or photo, Google will register only the first blog post, assuming the second, later one is a copy. So if I want both blog posts listed by search engines with the number of readers recorded, I must use a different photo, as well as different text.

My favourites:

1 Jumping into the water.

2 Love

3 The Work

4 The Caption

5 The Thinker

The Thinker Sculpture in Singapore. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

I could crop this picture to make the sculpture larger. However, I like to show the space around it.

4 Procession of People
The problem with a procession of people is that you need several photos, one from a distance to show the whole group, others to show individual faces. Your companions might not be willing to stand around doing nothing whilst you take photos. I adopt one of three options:

a) Park my companions in a nearby cafe whilst I take a photo set.
b) Enlist my companion as a photographer to photograph me.
c) Enlist my companion as model.

Author
Angela Lansbury