This is the same archeological site I posted yesterday, but this was taken pre-dawn at five o’clock in the morning. It is three separate exposures. My photo tour group and I had to leave our hotel at 2 am to drive two hours to the parking area on Mt. Nemrut, Turkey, and then we walked up a trail in the dark (with flashlights) for about 30 minutes to the megalithic heads on the top of the mountain. I had everyone set up and their tripods and open their shutters for 30 seconds. For the first exposure, I used my flashlight to paint with light the two foreground heads. Notice I sidelit them rather than using shadowless lighting from the front. The 30 second exposure gave me the time to carefully place the lighting as I wanted. The headless seated figures in the background were much further away and, due to the inverse square law (which describes how light intensity falls off so quickly), they needed the full 30 seconds of illumination to record a decent exposure. I did a couple of test shots first to determine this. I added the Milky Way later in Photoshop because I don’t like to use such a long shutter speed for stars. After 20 seconds stars start to form oblong shapes as their movement is recorded.
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