Please excuse the silly topic title

Next month I'm hopefully going to be scratching a long held itch that is to visit the temples in and around Angkor in Cambodia.

It's well documented that the temples are a huge tourist attraction, with hordes of tourists visiting as early as 6am. As nice as these people may be, I'd like to try to avoid photographing them, instead photographing the temples alone.

A big ask, and I would think nigh on impossible, but would a set of neutral density filters help?

I've heard of 10 stop ND's, so with early morning shooting would this make it at all possible that even with there being fellow tourists in the way, that I would be able to present the photos as if I were the only person there?

Finally, for the cliched shot that is early morning square on with Angkor Wat, which ND Grad would people recommend?

In combo with lower light levels ND or even polarizing filters can definitely work. A little experimenting is in order first, to determine how long a person can stand in one place before registering in the image. I used the technique quite successfully in a couple of spots within the Tower of London, placing my camera on a step (no tripods) and slowing the shutter speed down to two minutes using small apertures and a polarizer. If no one stopped in one place for more than 15 seconds, they didn't register at all. Even at nearer 30 seconds they registered only as faint "ghosts" in the image, and in fact produced a really neat affect. Lots of "bracketing" was required to produce a few images with no people registering. For longer exposures, stronger ND filters would be a plus, but of course you need to be sure to bring (or find) the means to securely brace your camera for such long exposures.

Way back with film I did some "Painting with light" Stuff and was wearing black clothes,maybe 20-30 second long exposure, I still saw ghost images of myself in the frame, maybe I was not moving fast enough.I would think 30-40 seconds if no one standing there stationary wearing dark clothes would start to work.
Get there EARLY and pray! I think the place was built for that anyway!
Hey I could be way wrong too.OK then 1 minute or more then?

Tell them to smile at the camera... best way to clear the place out!

What interests me is your request for advice on photographing a (potentially) cliche scene... do you intend to reproduce such a wide-angle shot as the one you've linked? Why bother, when so many have done so? I ask out of interest, not out of criticism.

Indeed, what you say about it is correct... I have seen a nearly identical shot before in these forums. Why not forego the typical wide-angle shot and push for telephoto... isolate a particular point of interest. By choosing a telephoto approach, you could isolate a particular area and possibly re-vision it. By doing so, you might also increase your chances of avoiding cliche, but also decrease the problem of people in your shot. Of course, if you choose poorly or there simply isn't a good angle to be found, you may magnify the problem of people in your shots.

Why use such old fashioned techniques when you can solve problem with 'Amenabar' written by one of our very own posters on here, GLuijk?
http://luminous-landscape.com/forum/index....topic=13139&hl=


PS3 extended came out with something similar a bit later.

Hi

Speaking of equipment; http://photoshopnews.com/2007/03/27/image-...p-cs3-extended/.

However, if it is very early morning and there are already alot of people in the subject itself, it may not be the subject you wish to photograph. I have been to Angkor twice; the second image you linked is no problem. All the crowd will be standing on the side of the pond where the photographer stood, in order to watch the sunset. The key is to be there early so you can get a spot and one to your liking.

Most people however will watch sunrise and sunset at the main Angkor temple. I think sunrise is better because at sunset you have more people there. Other smaller temples are empty at sunrise hours. Some of them lent themselves to photograph around 7:30 to 8:00am during the rather low warm rays from the sun.

You will benefit by a local guide that is knowledgeable of the correct times to be at the different places. I stayed at this place two times and warmly recommend them http://peaceofangkor.com/. They were reason I made a second photographic travel there .

Anders

I think there's probably a much better way, although I haven't experimented with it yet. Unfortunately it's also a more expensive way if you don't already own a copy of CS3 Extended.

One advantage of CS3E over the standard version of CS3, is its various stacking options. You can stack images to reduce noise; to increase DoF or to eliminate pesky tourists wandering in front of your camera.

The principle is, with camera on tripod, you take a number of shots at normal exposure, each separated by a few seconds. Load the images into a stack and render the resulting 'smart object' in median mode.

The slower the people are moving, the greater the interval between shots needs to be.

Reminds me "Rules Of Composition" "7" Of them.If I remembwr right.I remember them stated "One Subject ,Move In Close. That was one of them.I might start a new post asking " What are the 7 rules of composition are, in the first.Bet ya I get more than 7 of them !

This is the same problem as "ghosting" with panoramas, and it can be solved the same way, if everything else is stationary. It does not work with plants bending due to wind and alike.

Make a serie of shots and blend them with masks. If necessary, you can use a free blender: Enblend or Smartblend.

Thank you everybody

Why shoot a cliched shot? Just because it's been done a million times doesn't mean it is a bad shot. It will be one of many shots I take, but is one I would like to get 'in the bag'.



Many thanks Anders, much appreciated

My first thought was to send out invitations to an Amway or a Tupperware party. That always worked for me.

If there are many people moving around in the scene, and their occasional locations overlap where people had previously drifted by, they'd create a grey fog and not completely disappear.
Andy

That's odd. My first thought was an AK47 ;-)

Jeremy

I shot thereearly in the morning and took long exposures. All the flashlights people carried made interesting trails.I wasn't interested in taking any of the overkilled cliched pics. Instead of shooting the sunrise over the main temple, I shot all the backs of the (mostly)Japanese tourists sitting in a row of chairs in front of the temple. They all had top gear..a lot of whit L canaon telephotos were to be seen...lol. ANd they fired off TONS ....shutters going off crazy. Hope they got that postcard pic...lol.
Then I took a shot of the empty chairs....
Was shooting filmthen...will have to dig up the scans and post.
I find when you are at the big tourist spots...the tourists themselves make very interesting subject matter and comment.
Google Martin Parr to get an idea...very iconic ironic!

Best way to get rid of people is to take multiple images and use Photoshop CS3 Extended's Median Filter. It will remove all people. I remember seeing a software that does the same as well, but i have forgotten the name of it.

Send me in after I've had a curry and onions. That'll clear 'em out.
David

My eyes are burning just reading that!

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/done_that.shtml

The groups can be huge and move very slowly, sometimes they stay in one area for a long time. When it happened to me 2 years ago, I just photographed the tour groups.
http://www.pbase.com/camboman/tourists_at_angkor

I was looking at your photos a few minutes ago - very amusing

I'm beginning to think that Angkor's temples will very much lend themselves to infrared photography.

Can anybody recommend a specific filter which may be used on my 17-40L?

The Hoya R72 (720nm) is the standard, you'll need a tripod as it's a visually opaque filter. But the filter is only half the equation, the anti-IR filter in front of your sensor will determine how much exposure is needed to get a good histogram. My old Nikon d70 (a good choice for IR) lost 9 stops to the R72 filter, my newer d80 needed much more exposure, so much so that I gave up trying to use an external filter with it. I now use a Lifepixel converted d80 and I'm in heaven!

Frankly speaking, I believe that every single possible angle of Angkor Wat has been photographed hunderds of times, whatever the lens...

In the end only the sky and light quality matters... which means that you have 2 options:

1. Either be extremely lucky (like I was last year)
2. Spend a lot of time on the spot

Cheers,
Bernard

Maybe this:

http://www.photoacute.com/studio/index.html

Haven't tried myself yet though.

Cheers,
Bernard

During the week I was there tourists were never a problem. If a tour group was going into one complex I went to another or would go the opposite side as the tour group. We might meet in the middle but at either end I would have the area to myself.

Even in areas with statuary it was easy enough to wait several minutes for people to move on before taking the shot. It gave me time to more carefully consider lighting and composition, varying the amount of fill flash, etc. instead of shot gunning it.

I highly recommend hiring a car and driver. You get someone who knows the area well and how to work around the tours, air conditioning for a break, and a place to stash extra gear and have it watched. You also get a guide and interpreter and have a better chance of finding out of the way spots in the countryside.

Unfortunately GLuijk's progs seem to be available only for Windows. For Mac users, to avoid the huge expense of buying CS3 extended (an expense which is even huger when buying it in Europe; don't get me started....) try Photoacute. I've never used it for removing people, but it claims to be able to do so, and it has lived up to its other claims in my experience.

Mike

Edit: oops, just saw Bernard's post above.

If you shoot film (!), or have a D3, you can do multiple exposures (not multiple frames) - simply build up a single exposure in short 'bits' when there are no people in frame. Architecture guys do this.

Do 8 x 1 sec exposures at -3 stops each and time each one to be between crowds. That would be the same as a single 8 sec exposure.

Interesting feature of the D3 Nick; I didn't know that (not that I have a D3).