The Unfinished Cathedral

Many thanks for viewing, rating and commenting.

I might like it even more if it would be slightly looser from the sides. Also i have to ask why it is unfinished? Is it under construction or did they just leave it unfinished? You just got me curious.

Thank you very much for your constructive comment. As far as I know the construction has started at the end of 19th century. I don't know why it is left unfinished. In the inside you see donation boxes for the building. I think that the costs were enormous for such a huge "non- commercial" construction, so it is neglected even by the Catholic Church. Anyway my impression is that they expect to finish it one day, but only God knows when.

Hope that they will finish it some day, shame that if this beautiful building would be left unfinished. I have made some church pictures also but i haven't got to shoot nothing this huge because we tend to have only small town wooden churches here.

What a beautiful structure that only deserves the very best -- b/w as you have done! You have a nice composition. I do not mind the tight crop at all, as it fixes attention of this church, which demands our attention.

 

My suggestion to bring this to what I see as the real glory of the structure by adjusting the levels a little. I have posted an edited version of what I think you shot really is meant to be, with just a little encouragement, IMHO.

 

Regards,

Maria

Thank you very much for your constructive comment, your helpful suggestions and the interesting rework of the image.

Here I avoided further level adjustment fearing that the detail on the facade's lightened parts would be lost. I like very much your point of view and your rework.

Interesting architectural shot, and discussion. Maybe I would try a perspective correction, see example

Thank you very much for your kind comments and the rework. I'm posting below the original shot, taken at dusk under lighting conditions far from being favorable with a Sigma 10-20 zoom lens mounted on a Nikon D2X. The actual focal length was 14 mm, and the rest of the data was manually calculated, s 1/125 f /6.3 ISO 1600. I had to stay at a considerable distance to comprise the whole building in the frame, and chose spot metering to get a correct lighting of the facade and ignore the environment. During rework I substituted the overexposed sky. As you realize by seeing the original image the perspective is much stronger, but not esthetically acceptable. It suggests an idea of the building's dimensions however. Bearing this is mind I didn't try any strong rectification, because I knew no other way to express in the image what the constructors intended: To make it the biggest of its kind in the World. Except that, any further rectification would imply that the photographer stood at a considerably higher plane while taking the shot. This would be disputed by the depth perspective of the individual structures on the facade (e.g. consider the depth perspective of the arc ceilings above the doors) depriving the image of reality, which actually I wanted to avoid.

Thanks for your response, I understand better your intention. For a feeling of dimension, the human figures in the foreground are nice, and I am not sure if you need the warp anyway