Photos

I was going through my old photo album, when I discovered photos from one of my trips to Greece. Actually, from my all time favourite trip to Greece...

And I couldn't help not to smile when seeing that photos. Me, my high school class mates, sleepless nights...and a bit of sightseeing as well. Those were the days, my friends!

Among that photos also I found a picture of the Erechtheum. That is an ancient Greek temple on the north side of the Acropolis of Athens. It is very beautiful and in my opinion worth seeing. I like it much more than the Parthenon.

On the north side, there is another large porch with columns, and on the south, the famous "Porch of the Maidens", with six draped female figures (caryatids) as supporting columns, each sculpted in a manner different from the rest and engineered in such a way that their slenderest part, the neck, is capable of supporting the weight of the porch roof whilst remaining graceful and feminine. The porch was built to conceal the giant 15-ft beam needed to support the southwest corner over the metropolis, after the building was drastically reduced in size and budget following the onset of the Peloponnesian war.

One of the caryatids was removed by Lord Elgin in order to decorate his Scottish mansion, and was later sold to the British Museum (along with the pedimental and frieze sculpture taken from the Parthenon). Athenian legend had it that at night the remaining five Caryatids could be heard wailing for their lost sister. Elgin attempted to remove a second Caryatid; when technical difficulties arose, he tried to have it sawn to pieces. The statue was smashed and its fragments were left behind. It was later reconstructed haphazardly with cement and iron rods. Nowadays the five original Caryatids are displayed in helium-filled glass cases in the Acropolis Museum and are replaced in situ by exact replicas.(source: Wikipedia)

Just a few words on the photo. I had to work with low quality scanned image and I didn't have much choice, but to let the artistic side of me to prevail. I have increased sharpness, corrected colours, adjusted brightness and contrast and there was still something missing, there were still too many flaws in the picture. So I have decided to use soft focus on the image and the result was much better. Besides, you have all seen tons of perfec postcard - like photos of Acropolis, so it was about time to post an artistic one.