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Wat Phnom

I shot these last year when I was in Phnom Penh for a couple weeks. Wat Phnom is the main temple everyone goes to if they are in Phnom Penh. It’s a mixture of a tourist trap and a local temple. There is an entrance fee of $1 (Cambodia uses the US Dollar) but you can easily just step over the rope and avoid paying it. I saw a lot of cheap ass tourists doing this, it is a dollar and if you have money to fly into Cambodia or South East Asia you can afford a dollar to get into the temple. The dollar would just mean one less beer on the river during happy hour or just find a spot that offers the .50 cent beers instead. Yes, Cambodia does have .50 cent draft beers!

There isn’t a lot to say about Wat Phnom, to be honest, it’s run down and rather dirty. Cambodia doesn’t have the tourist income like Thailand does so their temples aren’t as lavish. When you factor in cheap asses avoiding the $1 fee you can see why the temple isn’t that great. Still, recommend a visit. There are monkeys running around but I could not get a shot. Just ignore the usual temple beggars and try not to let the trash that is a around distracts you from your visit.

All images shot on a Nikon D5500 with a Sigma 17-70mm 2.8 – 4.0

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Bangkok Buildings

It seems appropriate to publish this set of images today because I will be on the final leg of my flight back to Thailand when these go live. I don’t live in Bangkok and it’s not my favorite place due to the traffic and congestion. Still, it represents the final portion of my sojourn to get home. From Suwannaphum Airport or BKK back to Jomtien where I happily live.

Shot on a Nikon D5500 and using the Sigma 17-50mm 2.0 to 4.0 lens around Sukhimvit Soi 4 and Khao San Rd. The Sigma 17-50mm 2.0 to 4.0 is a great little lens that gives you a great focal range to work with on a crop sensor.

Only 5 shots after the marathon of 12 I published on Monday.

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Royal Tomb Stairs

This is from the Silver Pagoda which is attached to the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh Cambodia. No idea whose tomb it is since I didn’t take the offer of the tour and just did my own thing.

This image is almost purely out of the camera. Beyond using a profile setting and doing some slider adjustments I was happy with it. I did use a gradient for the sky and dodging and burning but that was all. Sounds like a lot but trust, me the Sony RX10 did all the work.

I will confess to using a polarizing filter on the camera to get the sky that blue. Otherwise, more or less what I shot.

Enjoy.

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Palace Temple

This is the actual temple for the Royal Palace in Cambodia. The thing is you can’t take any photos inside. I once got yelled at in the Bangkok Royal Palace because my tried to take one quietly, they know what shutter noise sounds like. With a mirrorless I could have done it but living over in South East Asia now I understand some things aren’t done so don’t push it.

I just like the roof of these temples, they are so intricate in their design. While this one isn’t the most elaborate it’s still a very cool roof. The inside is where the good stuff is but as I indicated, no photo zone.

Nothing but pure Photoshop on this since none of my plugins are working. So I’m going purist for thet time being until my schedule permits me the time to shift over to a PC and get things working.

Enjoy.

Palace Temple

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Red And Gold Roof

No idea if this roof was part of the palace or the temple at the Royal Palace in Cambodia. There were so many parts sealed off and I was using a zoom lens that I can’t remember.

Based just on the architecture my guess is it’s a palace building roof. The temple used a slightly different style architecture but I’m not 100%. Still, the way royal and temple buildings are done in South East Asia are really elaborate. I could totally live in a house with a roof like that. Repairs may be a bit costly but I figure I can afford a roof like that repairs may not be an issue.

Editing this I went with a quick run through with Aurora HDR 2017 so it has a bit of HDR in it. Then I went ahead and did a bit of dodging and burning and called it a day.

Enjoy.

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The Grand Entrance

I have no real idea if this is the grand entrance to the Royal Palace in Cambodia or not but it is in my world.

I have tried to edit this photo countless times. First time Photoshop kept crashing from one of my plug-ins. I gave up and walked away. Then I got got so sick I could barely get out of bed. I’m going to call it malaria or something exotic instead of the flu.

Today I finally got to edit this only for Photoshop to crash again. This time I went enough, it recovered to a state I was happy enough in so left it alone.

I’d tell you how I edited it but to be honest, I gave up after a bit because of the crashing. I think it may be time I move to a Windows Machine and give up some of my plugins.

Enjoy.

Grand Entrance

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The Gate

One of the gates at the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. What is funny about these is that they are all along the palace walls but you can only get in at one place.

You can also make out some of the mural along the wall on the inside. This is standard I guess because the Royal Palace in Bangkok had the same thing when I visited there.

I did make this HDR out of a single image. For stuff like this HDR works well. So a single image HDR was done in Aurora and I called it done.

Enjoy.

The Gate

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Royal Tomb

I freely admit that I may be guessing at this but I do believe this is a royal tomb at the Silver Pagoda which is attached to the Royal Palace in Phnom Penh. I know this simply by listening to the tour guide that was giving a tour. I generally skip the guides, not due to costs but I’m there for photos and I don’t think its fair for me to drag a guide around while I frame shots or look for different angles.

There are a few of these around the temple grounds, each for a different member of the royal family (again, based on what I heard). This was like one of the first ones I encountered when I walked into that area of the palace compound.

This is a bit HDR but I didn’t go overboard. I just used one exposure to make it. To keep the image from breaking down I didn’t push it too much. On the smaller sensor cameras the image quality can go to crap quickly if you start pushing pixels.

Enjoy.

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Cambodian Royal Palace

Behold! I took pictures while in Cambodia! I will admit the .65 cents (US) beer was also very tempting. There may be less photos and more been consumption than normal but at .65 who can complain? That’s cheap even compared to Thailand.

This is the entrance to the Royal Palace; well in theory. Real entrance is about 300 meters to the right but the nice guards pointed me to it. Then I got charged $10 to enter the place. I could have taken this shot and been done with it to be honest but I would have missed the Silver Pagoda which is more interesting than the palace itself which is sealed off for most areas.

I only took my Sony RX10 on this trip. I went light because Asian carriers are a pain in the ass about weight allowances on baggage. So with a 24-200mm lens on the camera it would do what I needed and then some.

This isn’t HDR I just did my normal routine and then started adding filters until it looked right. I didn’t even bother to blend the stuff. It just came out looking good and in the end I was happy.  I also left the bird flying on purpose. Think it adds a bit of something.

Enjoy.

Cambodian Royal Palace

 

 

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Bali Hai Lighthouse

I think this area is called Bali Hai but don’t quote me on it. If you don’t have a motorbike or car you aren’t going to get there because it’s a hike from the Bali Hai pier in Pattaya.

I drove up there and was just tooling around. Bali Hai pier is getting redone so it was closed and I didn’t feel like trying to find a space to park and then walk out on the pier. So I rode down to the lighthouse and took some photos.

Light was kinda flat so I went with a black and white for this because I think it looks cooler this way anyways. I left the people in the image to give you a sense of scale. It’s not a big lighthouse, hell I don’t even think it does anything except guard the weeds and trash around the area.

Enjoy!

Bali Hai Lighthouse