Bagan, Myanmar

Ancient temples, ancient stupas, ancient pagodas, buddhas, frescos, street food, local people, sunrise, sunset, oxen, Bos indicus, horse drawn carts, moon rise, lacquer ware production

Wrought iron gate, Sulamani Temple, Bagan, Myanmar (best seen at larger sizes)<br />
<br />
As my talented photo friends in SmugMug know, it's fun playing with light and shadow. I was inside the Sulamani Temple and looked out to see a friend admiring this beautiful gate. There was a huge dynamic range to accommodate for the shot I wanted. I needed to capture the details of the gate and my friend in semi-silhouette, while not blowing the highlights and washing out the fine gate details against the overly bright sky. I underexposed by a couple of f-stops, knowing that I could retrieve some detail in the shadows from the RAW files in Photoshop, but that there was no way to recover detail from blown highlights. I also chose an aperture that resulted in the gate and my friend being in sharp focus, but the distant background unfocused so I didn't draw attention away from the gate....all within a second or two for this unposed spontaneous moment. <br />
<br />
In the days of film, I would have used a neutral density filter to hold back the highlights, but at the expense of losing some of the light in the top part of the arch, which would have unbalanced the photo.<br />
<br />
For the same problem in reverse, shooting from outside the gate, but retaining light on the Buddha statue on the inside, see here: <a href="http://goo.gl/OjVz6">http://goo.gl/OjVz6</a>

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Wrought iron gate, Sulamani Temple, Bagan, Myanmar (best seen at larger sizes)

As my talented photo friends in SmugMug know, it's fun playing with light and shadow. I was inside the Sulamani Temple and looked out to see a friend admiring this beautiful gate. There was a huge dynamic range to accommodate for the shot I wanted. I needed to capture the details of the gate and my friend in semi-silhouette, while not blowing the highlights and washing out the fine gate details against the overly bright sky. I underexposed by a couple of f-stops, knowing that I could retrieve some detail in the shadows from the RAW files in Photoshop, but that there was no way to recover detail from blown highlights. I also chose an aperture that resulted in the gate and my friend being in sharp focus, but the distant background unfocused so I didn't draw attention away from the gate....all within a second or two for this unposed spontaneous moment.

In the days of film, I would have used a neutral density filter to hold back the highlights, but at the expense of losing some of the light in the top part of the arch, which would have unbalanced the photo.

For the same problem in reverse, shooting from outside the gate, but retaining light on the Buddha statue on the inside, see here: http://goo.gl/OjVz6