Donkey of Torture

Torun Poland, Donkey of Torture

I was lucky enough that when i was in Poland last month at a wedding, we walked through the town square, The polish keep a  replica of a medieval torture donkey/device right in the centre of town as a reminder to those who would commit crimes in there city that they will receive punishment!, obviously it's not just about the picture itself, it's about the message. Back in medieval times if you were unlucky enough to be caught for a minor crime such as stealing a loaf of bread the punishment for this offence was to be strapped on top of a similar sized donkey with a metal ridge down it's spine about the same design as the one pictured above. The villages would chase the animal through town, whipping it across the cobbled streets in order to cause the perpetrator more pain. what's so interesting about the piece is that it's a commemoration of a particularly brutal form of punishment, fairly unique to early polish culture, which is still important enough to them to be displayed in the town square as part of there culture.            

Lighting:- The actual picture itself was taken around dusk in order to capture the mood and slightly disturbing nature of the piece, you can clearly see the height and width of the metal bar and the low lighting works to illuminate the dark nature of the statue.

Composition:- the composition of this is made up of the replica of the donkey the classically tiled streets which also give off connotations of the past and the lighting comes from a distant street light it serves to accent and shade certain aspects of the statue.


perspective:- perspective is about the translation of a three dimensional object to a two dimensional
picture in this case the picture is fairly close to the focal point and comes off quite well the ears are obviously further away in this second picture in relation to the back end so it gives the slight illusion that the back end is larger than it is.


Focal point:- The main focal point of this picture is the statue


        F:-(around) 4 was chosen as the subject of the photo is not moving so the length of time the photo takes to be captured is not important.
        ISO:-(around) 150 seeing as there isn't a lot of light (no sun and minimal external light sources