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Travel landmark

Landmark photos usually fail in the same way: she's a tiny figure dead-center, dwarfed by a monument, surrounded by strangers. A few composition moves make her the subject and the landmark the setting — which is the photo she actually wants.

A woman in the foreground of a famous setting, placed off-center, the landmark clearly behind her with a sense of scale and depth.

The annotated breakdown is inside.

The usual miss

Back up far enough to "fit the whole thing in," and she becomes a five-foot figure swallowed by a fifty-foot monument, marooned in the dead center with a sea of other tourists around her. The landmark is technically in the shot — and the photo is about nothing. It's the single most common travel-photo mistake: prioritizing the building over the person.