Does photographing architecture of times past give us a glimpse into the lives of the people in those times? Not really, or at least not completely, given that the history left behind for us is selective. It doesn’t take away from the wonders of architecture, though!Β
New places, new faces…
Sometimes both together!! π
Outside Angkor Wat
The ancient structures in Angkor Wat are more green than stone, more alive than dead.
At East Mebon, Cambodia.
For Jennifer Nichole Wells’ Color Your World Challenge: Tropical Rain Forest. FitsΒ the theme color-wise as well as climate-wise. π
Seeing that the aim of drinking games is to get drunk — if one wins a drinking game (as highly unlikely and against the odds as it may be), do they actually lose?
This lake just outside the Preah Khan temple at Cambodia. It was the middle of morning when we passed beside it, but then, I was playing with the colors in the picture later, and I absolutely loved it when I tinted the blue with yellow. This golden sky makes my heart soar with joy in a way that the original blue sky wasn’t able to, and I just don’t feel any shame or guilt for tampering with the colors so! π
For SL-Week: Reflection, and Weekly Photo Challenge: Jubilant.
While we were touring Cambodia, we had to visit the famous Ta Prohm temple. (Lara Croft, anyone?) It’s just amazing to see how the tall, beautiful trees there are one with the ancient, dilapidated buildings.
As we left the temple, I glanced back the way we came, and saw the crumbling structures, the swaying trees, the absorbed tourists. I felt like capturing it all, so I clicked a series of shots thinking of assembling a panorama from them later. I still have to process most of the photos I clicked there, but this panorama was one of the first ones I worked on! I used Hugin to stitch 4 photographs for this one, and had to use quite a few post-processing skills later ( π ) to remove duplicate people and solidify ghostly ones. π It isn’t a 360Λ (or even a 180Λ) view, but I like how it reflects everything that my eyes saw then.
For SL-Week: Panorama.
Clicked in the half-light of sunset at the Tonle Sap lake near Kompong Phluk village, Cambodia.
I’ve deepened the colors in the picture to highlight the sunset atmosphere.
Clicked at Kompong Phluk, Tonle Sap lake, Cambodia.
Kompong Phluk is a ‘floating’ village built on stilts, and tourists can pay to be taken around on a boat ride through the place. I was not a huge fan of the experience; the village certainly does not seem to reap any benefits of the money paid by visitors. Anyway, here is a photograph of a local woman rowing about going about her chores nonchalantly. π
This picture was kinda blurred, but I didn’t want to throw it away — I really love the half-turned torso of the subject. To make the photograph usable, I decided to make the background monochrome and apply a selective blur, and highlight the woman and her boat in the foreground. However, the varied blurriness required of the elements made my first attempt look weird and unnatural. So I started working with the boat and the woman separately. Frankly, I’ve forgotten the myriad effects I played around with. I remember going crazy with the Colors tool for the boat, and using edge detection and softening and various blend modes and transparencies for the layers. The final changes I made were smudging, shading and healing the subject to make her blend in with the background.
For SL-Week: Women. Happy Women’s Day!
Vacations are for fun and dancing. This is one way the both can be combined, I guess — My friends imitating the dancing Apsaras carved over the lintel of the door behind them at Preah Khan, Cambodia.
I wanted to attempt one of those paper-tear effects for my friends’ torsos, showing the photo ‘tearing off’ revealing a differently processed version of the same photo below the torn portion — but decided to post something simpler until I get better at the paper-tear one. This photo still has a differently processed version in the middle. I’ll call this Stage-1 of paper-tear effect. π
This is at Banteay Srei, Cambodia. This temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva, and is built of red sandstone, which gives it its beautiful color. I experimented with HDR for this picture, and though I’m not usually a fan of HDR that is at the extreme end, I can’t believe that the more extreme version was the one I liked for this temple! I still don’t really dig the way it looks at the upper edges of the temple. The sky made the edges jarring, and further processing made it seep into them; I retained the seepy version. (I think I should take a tripod with me on my next vacation. Or maybe I should inlay my own sky. π ) I’m blown away by the details in the rest of the structure, though.
Eventually, I tried this HDR version on a few other architecture photographs that I brought back from that vacation; I liked some, and some I didn’t. I’m still experimenting…
Half a photograph 