A useless photo

When I pressed the shutter for this frame, I had that small, smug feeling a photographer gets when the light seems to behave and the histogram looks civilised. The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan — with its glass-vaulted ceiling, ornate façades, and marble floors — is a location that practically hands you a composition on a silver platter. Symmetry is built into its bones.

But then I went home and did the thing every street and travel photographer dreads: I Googled it. The search results were a flood of nearly identical shots, all taken from the same central axis, all with the same forced symmetry, all showing off the same grandeur. My version wasn’t bad, but it was just… another one.

From a technical standpoint, the exposure is balanced enough to handle the tricky dynamic range between the shadowed façades and the sunlit background. I resisted the temptation to pull up the shadows too far, leaving a bit of weight in the darker areas so the scene retained depth. The floor reflections came out nicely, giving the space a sense of elegance and scale. Lens distortion is under control, though the verticals aren’t perfectly parallel — a reminder that I was working handheld, without overthinking.

Ultimately, it’s a competent execution of a cliché. And while there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it’s a humbling reminder: sometimes, to make a photo stand out in an over-photographed place, you have to step a little to the side — literally and metaphorically.