Abandoned monastery

From today's walk around the area...

Monastery are always in very good points: nice views, available water, good climate...

Antonio Correia said:

From today's walk around the area...

Monastery are always in very good points: nice views, available water, good climate...

Click to expand...

Very nice Antonio, beautiful light and great detail in your shadow areas. Like the texture on the columns, and the graffiti on the back wall. All that said, it is the way that you composed the image that draws me into a your work and leaves me in a contemplative and spiritual state of mind. Thanks for sharing.

Best, Bill

Of all the works you've presented, I find this one the most compelling to be a B&W. The greenery, while making the image contemporary, is too green for me, too much drawing the eye from the archways and colonnade.

Thank you Bill and Chris.

Two very different points of view...

Antonio Correia said:

From today's walk around the area...

Monastery are always in very good points: nice views, available water, good climate...

Click to expand...

Antonio,

Not often you present a picture that I can both enjoy yet find room to give strong critical feedback that I'm thunderingly assertive about! This hallowed place has history behind it and the wonderful illumination to the view hides all that. Such walkways do not do well exposed to such brightness. The men walk in shadows with heads bowed. This is not the walkway of some fiesta of wedding procession. We need rich deep shadows to venerate the past and them men in solemn devotion, chanting "Kyrie Eleison!"

I could hardly imagine this needing color, but certainly not with any green grass, as has already been pointed out, unless you also add two children chasing butterflies. This ism meant to be in monochrome. Each color, brings diversions of the wrong signals of ordinariness and the superficial delights which prevent us seeing the rubric of the world.

So, if you can, build us a monochrome version that carries the Holy Spirit and the scared provenance of the place.

Asher

I do not see your point about the color perhaps simply because I may have misunderstood your statements.
I like the photograph in color. It's presence doesn't implies that the building is new or old.
The pavement is even rather too regular for such a place. I myself wonder why is it like that.
I took the photograph through some iron bars protecting the entry.
Here is also a view of the exterior of the building.

Antonio Correia said:

I do not see your point about the color perhaps simply because I may have misunderstood your statements.
I like the photograph in color. It's presence doesn't implies that the building is new or old.
The pavement is even rather too regular for such a place. I myself wonder why is it like that.
I took the photograph through some iron bars protecting the entry.
Here is also a view of the exterior of the building.

Click to expand...

Antonio,

This first picture works well with color, as the green vegetation contrast with and clothes the abandoned building in a sympathetic way.












The B&W picture below is a treat to the eye! Thanks so much!







Here, the darker tones allow us to better think on the formal religious devotion here through many hundreds of years. Such basic fabric is revealed best when we are not distracted by the immediate satiation of the brain with bright illumination and colors. When you have seemingly revealed all in the bright original version, we're diverted from meditation that occurs only in the subdued shadows tonalities of the B&W version, where we search for meanings.

To that end, the richest, most fully developed meditative version could even darker. Paradoxically. Our minds will sine a light around into the dark voids and interrogate the priests and brothers on the way to and from there daily duties. Sometimes, Ansel Adams reworked his best photographs over and over again for months and years and decades. There's endless potential in your photograph here too .


Asher

Thank you Asher !

I love the color on the outside shot of the Monastery but agree with Asher as to how the B&W somehow sanctifies the interior. I love the bottom shot immensely.

Quite dramatic !
It is good now, yes.

Thank you for the push !

HI,
yep, the b&w satisfies what one expects and somehow presumes in context with "old and gone", but I'd prefer the colorversion:
It has great light and the green grass is the perfect contrast to the old walls, but: the green grass is the link to the presence and the future, too!
So there is not only the suspense of colors and light but also the suspense of time, of history.
Even, if you want, of young and old ... so, there is much more in the colorversion.

Just in case you wish to play with this photograph, please be my guest !

I'm sticking with my first comment. For me, I am not looking for an illustrated story,but instead a sensual awareness. As my wife's aunt Georgia would say,"to each their own said the old lady as she kissed the cow." (What ever that means)

Best, Bill

Antonio Correia said:

From today's walk around the area...

Monastery are always in very good points: nice views, available water, good climate...

Click to expand...

Antonio,

Your picture is bright and my grandchiildren would be chasing each other up and down. It is "today" and a good place to visit. I'm interested in the memories. These require stepping away from the reality of the present and reaching into the past. We do that when we have to search and build in our mind complete forms.

Thanks for inviting me to post my own version of your monastery picture. I wanted to used the shadows more and keep out much of the light whixh chases away the prayers of the past!





I feel there's more solitude here and I'm closer to my inner thoughts and connecting to some cosmic fabric searching for peace.


It's kind of you to allow me this privilege of posting my version!


Asher

It is so dense Asher...

Antonio Correia said:

It is so dense Asher...

Click to expand...

Antonio, my friend,

Did you mean dense or dim?

The dim lighting returns "spiritual mystery". (Bright colors do the opposite! There's none in a neon sign, a red umbrella or a yellow line in the road!) In subdued light, however, your picture takes us back in time. We become more primitive and existential; we then reach in and "connect" with the pace and spirituality of the monastery.

Asher

Perhaps dim is more suitable...

I lack vocabulary

Antonio Correia said:

Perhaps dim is more suitable...

I lack vocabulary

Click to expand...

Your pictures speak for you, Antonio! A thousand times more ideas and words!

Asher