The Making of "Racing against the Sunset"

Winner of the January, 2017 "Sunrise/Sunset" photo contest

By candid in Photo Contests on Mar 4, 2017

"Racing against the Sunset"

First of all, my sincere thanks to everyone who nominated and voted for my photo in January 2017's "Sunrise/Sunset" contest.

Now on to how I took and processed this picture:

Most of my photos are taken while on vacation and I have never travelled with the specific purpose of taking photos. I just travel to different places and take pictures of things that I find interesting and inspiring.

This image was taken on 22 January 2013 in Bagan, Myanmar. It is home to the largest and densest concentration in the world of Buddhist temples, pagodas, stupas, and ruins with many dating from the 11th and 12th centuries.

Myanmar astonishes me because of its great cultural landscape and the exceptionally photogenic hazy evening and morning light. This photo was taken from Shwesandaw paya (not a very original point of view).

All the tour guide books will tell you that Shwesandaw is really crowded, and it was, but for sunset, the views are great. The carts with tourists hurrying to see the sunset were perfect for the foreground.

This photo was shot handheld with a Pentax K-5 and an smc Pentax-DA 70mm F2.4 Limited lens in RAW Format.

• Aperture F8
• Shutter Speed 1/250s
• ISO 80
• Exposure compensation -2.00 eV (to protect the highlights)

The unprocessed image looked like this:

The unprocessed image

For processing I used Photoshop with the Filter Viveza 2 from the Nik Collection. I adjusted the following (approximately):

• Saturation +50%
• Contrast   +10%
• Structure  +20%

Through the boosting of saturation I tried to convey the magical atmosphere of the place.

After resizing the image to final dimensions I applied an output sharpening with an PS action based on the "Smart sharpen" filter.

I am honored to have won this contest with so many beautiful other images.

Best regards

Alexander (candid)