At this point of the night in Bagan, there was no one else around. All the tourists and merchants had long since left for the night as the last of the ox carts lumbered slowly down the dirt road below. Save for the faint echo of distant sounds and the eerie shadows cast by the light of the full moon, I was the only one left, all alone and waiting patiently for the temples to illuminate for the night.
I spent the better part of a week exploring and photographing the ancient temple complexes of Bagan Myanmar by bicycle, both day and night, attempting to find the best spots and angles for photography. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, Bagan’s rulers managed to construct over 10,000 religious monuments in an area of 40 square miles. Today, after numerous recorded earthquakes, 2229 temples and pagodas still remain. That leaves countless opportunities for unique and interesting compositions, just waiting to be discovered. Even with a week of exploration, I feel like I barely scratched the surface. Then again, that just means I’ll have more to do when I revisit Myanmar this December. 🙂
Technical Mumbo Jumbo
Camera: Nikon D800
Lens: 28-300 f/3.5-5.6 (Shot at 180 mm)
Tripod: RRS TVC-33 / BH-55 Ballhead / RRS L-Plate
ISO: 100 at f/8
3 Manual Exposures
Location: Shot in Bagan, Myanmar – January 2013, and post-processed in Guilin, China – February 2013.
Hardware: 15” 2011 Macbook Pro, Wacom Intuos5 Small Tablet
Software: Lightroom, Photoshop, NIK Color Efex Pro 4
Technique and Details: Digital Blending with Luminance Masking
I shot 3 manual exposures in order to correctly capture the quickly fading light. With the bright moonlight, I was able to get a nice luminance variation throughout the different layers of atmospheric depth.
The blending was achieved using luminance masking techniques in Photoshop. After that, simple color corrections were applied using NIK Color Efex Pro 4 and Photoshop Adjustment Layers.
Espresso: Caffe Aurora – Medaglia D’oro. It was on sale so I bought 1 kilo. 🙂
