Angkor Wat Sunset
Here is my shot from last night at Angkor Wat. If you have been to Angkor Wat you will know that this view is actually in an easterly direction so is more suited to sunrises rather than sunsets. However the sheer intensity of last night’s sunset meant that the beautiful light was visible in every direction. I love the sunsets where you get this mixture of lilac and magenta, they are much more serene than the harsh deep fiery red and orange sunsets that I tend to always get in the UK.
Whilst shooting this I was having a little giggle to myself as a Japanese tourist, who was setting up about 20 meters away from me, began to get out his huge really right stuff tripod, full frame Canon camera (5DMk3 I think), huge tilt shift lens, lee filter kit, remote shutter release etc etc. I was there with my tiny Gitzo 1542T traveler tripod, ungripped D7000 with 12-24 f4 lens and that was it. He ended up lying on his belly, tripod as low as possible with two feet in the water, you get the idea and whilst this was happening I was just sitting comfortably on the wall with my tripod in front of me at eye level. As I didn’t see his images I can’t comment on what the final image looked like but I hope it was good because he made a right fuss taking it!
When my tuk-tuk driver dropped me off at Angkor Wat it was about 4.30pm, knowing that the sunset wasn’t until about 6.30-7pm I had plenty of time to kill. I had a quick last minute idea to set my camera running on a time lapse whilst I relaxed and people-watched (you really do see how strange most people are!). It is nothing special and the camera was just set to Aperture priority, auto wb etc rather than manually adjusted, however a quick de-flicker with LRtimelapse and then compiled with Quicktime Pro has given a nice result. The timelapse is pretty compressed as I wanted to upload it quickly here on the dodgy Cambodian internet!
p.s If you do something similar I would suggest using a longer shutter speed around 1.5 secs to smooth the peoples movement out and make it look a bit more realistic!
[vimeo 45812059 w=560&h=315]
