There are 20 Harvest Moon: Echoes of Teradea photo puzzles among the Power Statues, and the photo you take has to match what the statue is showing you. The rule is to get everything else right first, then work through the available expressions.
Harvest Moon: Echoes of Teradea photo puzzles and the 20 statues
The procedure, in order:
- Get the pose right.
- Frame it so the statue's face is clearly in shot.
- Toggle through the expressions until the statue lights up.
The framing is not a formality — a photo that cuts off the statue's face will not register however good the expression is.
Step 1: check it is a photo puzzle
Because the photo puzzles are only one of eight statue types, a statue that rejects a photo may not be a photo puzzle at all. The map data lists the puzzle type for every statue, so you can confirm what you are actually looking at before spending time on framing.
The full type list and the count of each is on the power statue page. If the type listed is not photo, stop fiddling with the camera and go and solve the actual puzzle.
Step 2: the expression toggle
The expression toggle is the part that trips people up. The community answer on the Steam discussion board is that you make sure the pose is right and the statue's face is clearly in shot, and then you toggle through the expressions. "Flushed face" is one of the selectable expressions, although it does not actually look like a flushed face in the shot — which is exactly why players cannot find it by eye.
If you know you have the pose and the framing right and the statue still will not light up, keep cycling the expression wheel. The correct expression is in the list; it just does not look the way the label suggests.
Photo Mode is a separate thing
Do not confuse the statue puzzle with the Photo Mode feature you learn in the first chapter. Photo Mode is for composition and for saving pictures, and the statue puzzle borrows the same camera framing but wants one specific pose and one specific expression.
So if you are trying to compose a nice photo and the statue refuses to light up, the answer is not to improve the composition. It is to keep cycling the expression wheel.
What you get for solving them
Each solved statue awards a Power Wisp Fruit, and the twenty photo puzzles are part of the 160 total that make the All Mysteries Solved achievement.
That is also why it is worth finishing them even though they are fiddly: a statue you cannot solve is a Power Wisp you never collect, and the upgrades you spend those fruit on are permanent. What the fruit unlocks is on the power wisp page.