The reason the city of Lalibela is visited by almost everyone who comes to Ethiopia is because of the 11th century rock-hewn churches. There are 11 churches in total, and they were built over the course of 23 years by 40,000 workers. The best of them is St. George, pictured here. What you are seeing is a church made from solid rock. The surrounding rock was removed, and what was left was a monolithic structure made of a solid piece of rock complete with rooms, doorways, and a water drainage system. Conceptually, this is simply brilliant. Who would have thought of making a church like this by simply looking at a rocky plateau? In all of my travels, I've never seen such Christian devotion as in Ethiopia. The pilgrims in the foreground walked barefoot from Gondar to Lalibela, a distance of about 210 miles, to visit this church built 1000 years ago. This group actually posed for the camera on the other side of the church, and that angle wasn't as good as this elevated perspective. So, I used the quick selection tool to select them and then pasted the group into this view. I used a 24mm lens for both the subjects and the background, and my settings were 1/800, f/4.0, and 800 ISO.
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