Camera: Nikon D4S

Focal Length: 20mm

Aperture: f/2.8

Shutter: 1/1250

ISO: 50

Editing: Lightroom

I was visiting Botswana, and as part of a series of photos i have been doing about "Places of Faith", i sought to photograph some of the local ones. It turns out there is a very big Hindu Community in Botswana and they have created some very beautiful works of art there - one such place being the Sri Balaji Mandir.

It is adorned by layer upon layer of intricate sculpting that forms a tall pyramid-like shape that reaches a good 25 meteres in height right atop the main entrance.

It happened that i ws visiting at sunset, so the lighting bathed the structure in a golden color that contrasted directly with the clean skies behind it.

Objectively i just wanted to capture the magnitude of the towering structure at the same time that i also captured the intricacies of the many gods sculpted into the structure in a way that would honor the beauty of the religion.

Hi Jay welcome to " The Real Critique " and thank you for given us a try - I will jump right in - I see an image full of history with a story to tell well done great capture.

What we do here is try and help the photographer see their image with a fresh pair of eyes - If this was mine this is what I would do - see Attached - A small crop to help take the viewer closer to the action. - I used Nik Tools Tonal Contrast of the main structure to help contrast and colour with added texture - last I used the burn and dodge tools to add depth - Thank you for sharing...

Hi Daniel,

took your adviced and forther dialed inthe contrast details, and went about creating a bit more depth as you did, and this is the result which i will re-upload for curation.

Jay,

Daniel gave already a good advice. I suggest to straighten more. Below my suggestion. Theo-senior critic.

I did go about trying to straighten it more, but knowing the original image it became a but weird to me. i will try.

Thanks

Hi All,

here goes my third attempt at it.

Thans for all the input. In this case to straighten it, i actually went into photoshop, used the rulers and lines, to created a controlled distortion of the image to make sure that all the horizontal lines were perfectly horizontal and its actually made it look at lot more like the real thing seen by the eye. so thanks a million for all the input.