Bad Picture: Afternoon light on Halong Bay

My photography is certainly not of a level that most of my shots are a success—I generally take at least a dozen pictures of a single subject, then later edit and select the decent one or two. Often, many of my photographs come out very badly—they might be blurry, poorly framed, lacking a subject, or looking like I photographed them while dropping the camera. Yet every now and then, one of these ‘bad photographs,’ ends up being appealing to me in some way. While it may not get anything right photographically, it still manages to communicate something about the subject—sometimes even better than a good photograph can.

Like the above shot of Halong Bay, for example. It’s really not something you’d put in a frame—there’s no clear subject, the details of the boat are slipping right of the edge of the picture, and there’s something in the foreground that has been reduced to out-of-focus fuzz. But despite all of this, the picture somehow captures the mood of the afternoon cruise even better than my other pictures. The glowing colour of the light, the rolling forms of the karsts, even the total lack of focus is actually a benefit; it all somehow captures the sense of languidly enjoying the last warmth of an afternoon out on the beautiful green waters of Halong Bay.