Cambodia held many surprises for me, one of them being how flat and wide open it is. I could not tell you why but I had in my mind mountains a la Laos but Cambodia is mostly home to some impressive completely flat wetlands and rice fields stretching to infinity. Another surprise was how stunningly gorgeous most of the Cambodian temples are. Naturally I knew of Angkor and the amazing temples, even they were more mindblowing than expected. But other temples in Cambodia can certainly hold their own, this golden temple (I forget where, somewhere around Pursat I think) is superb. The image is actually captured from another temple on the top of a hill, with Nathan Horton as my guide.
This is the golden temple and wide open plains of Cambodia:
This image has received a fair bit of processing and is very much an experiment. The golden temple was already bathed in the warm light of the setting sun but I directed the light in Photoshop, creating a light beam from the left corner to the temple by darkening the rest of the image. I also changed almost all of the colour tones. The biggest addition however is the texture. I have recently been immensely inspired by photographers Tony Hewitt and Jeremy Cowart and their use of textures to create illustrations. This is an experiment in creating a look of a textured faded old painting and all straight honest feedback is very much appreciated. Let me know your thoughts after you have taken in this image for a while.
Flemming
PS. I am considering recording a few Photoshop tutorials for fun and to test the waters. Would you be interested in seeing how I process an image like the above?
