Impressive statues

Famine Memorial in Dublin

This picture was shot in Dublin during a city-weekend-trip of me, my brother and my father in 2015. We did a large stroll through the city to the harbour and back again. Somewhere during our walk back from the harbour to the city center we found this spot where these statues were placed. It was the Famine Memorial.

The memorial gave me the chills of how it was so lifelike and just plainly impressive. At that moment I did not know what the memorial was about (to be honoust, I just checked it on the interwebs) and I thought it was about refugees that came to Dublin in some horrible past. However, these statues commemorate the Great Famine of the mid 19th century. During the famine approximately 1 million people died and a million more emigrated from Ireland, causing the island’s population to fall by between 20% and 25%. The cause of Famine is blamed on a potato disease commonly known as potato blight. Although blight ravaged potato crops throughout Europe during the 1840s, the impact and human cost in Ireland, where one third of the population was entirely dependent on the potato for food, was exacerbated by a host of political, social and economic factors which remain the subject of historical debate. [source: DiscoverIreland]

That day I had my 10-22 mm lens with me and to get an interesting shot you really need to come close to the statue. I remember that I wanted to get at least one of the other statues also in the shot. Because the sky was so nice that day I tried to add that in too. The camera was set on aperture priority and an ISO of 100. With a low aperture set, I would have the face of the woman in focus and the background a bit blurry. The camera had set the exposure at 1/1250th of a second

In post I tinkered a while with the colours but in the end I went for B/W because that gave the picture just a little bit more of drama. The picture was made on the spot, without any fancy settings, without any accesoires and in the end only a B/W filter in post production. That made this shot a great impulsive photo!

Camera settings:

Location