A panoramic view of the prahara (enclosure level) of the Veerabhadra temple at Lepakshi, India – this temple follows the Vijayanagara architectural construction style. I used HDR processing for this, since the angle of sunlight and the shadows caused some variations in the pictures that made up the panorama.
For Lens-Artists Photo Challenge #35: Architecture, hosted by Amy this week.
Sunset, and the edge of a cliff that houses a temple. At Uluwatu, Bali..
Nary a straight line here! 🙂
Walls in temples are usually covered in small, hand-sculpted carvings like these. Sometimes, their details are just astounding.
Clicked at Lepakshi temple, India..
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 ( 😛 ) to remove duplicate people and solidify ghostly ones. 😉 It isn’t a 360˚ (or even a 180˚) view, but I like how it reflects everything that my eyes saw then.
For SL-Week: Panorama.
Temples in India, at least ones that have a courtyard around them, have trees in the courtyard. I clicked this tree at the huge courtyard of the Lepakshi temple. Of course, the picture doesn’t do justice to the size of the tree — it extends far beyond this frame, but the view of the tree through the pillared frame, in turn leading to glimpses of sky (and the temple) through the tree’s branches, was too good to resist a couple of clicks! 🙂
For SL week: Trees.
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. 🙂 ) 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…
During my recent vacation to Cambodia with friends, we visited quite a few historical / archaeological sites; Pre Rup was one such temple. From what I learned, the Cambodians apparently associate this place with cremation rituals, though not much is known about why that is so. What I found interesting here is the presence of pairs of lions that flank stairway entrances — these are supposed to be guardian lions. I think they still look majestic, and couldn’t resist clicking their pictures whenever I could see them while strolling around the temple’s perimeter!
This is a processed version of one of those photographs, which I’ve submitted to Leanne Cole for her Monochrome Madness weekly series. (Do visit her post if you’d like to see some fantastic monochrome photographs.)
I’d been on a day trip last weekend with girl friends — we visited the historical temple complex at Lepakshi, just 120km from Bangalore. It was fun, and we clicked (and posed for) a lot of photographs in the serene place. I’ve still not processed most of the photographs that I clicked, and feel guilty that I’ve not shared them with my friends yet — especially since one of those friends has very promptly shared the ones that she clicked. I’ve just not been able to catch up with things this week; even this post is delayed and I’m writing it in a hurry. I’m hoping that I’ll get to it in the next couple of days.
So this picture is (the only) one that I did process — a part of the temple courtyard. It’s a panorama that I converted to monochrome, with some split toning to add that additional depth. It goes without saying that I’ve submitted it to Leanne Cole for this week’s Monochrome Madness. 🙂
Half a photograph 