Tens of millions of people have taken billions of pictures of the Taj Mahal, and it’s hard to come up with an image that doesn’t look like all of the other shots. Using Photoshop and thinking outside the box, I came up with this composite of what I’d like to have photographed if it were only possible. My photo tour group and I shot the Taj from private farmland thanks to my local guide who knew the farmer. The sunrise placed the sun too far to the left of the famous tomb, so I took a picture of the sun separately and composited it behind the architecture. The mist in the air kept the illumination of the sun diminished. I then applied Flood, my favorite Photoshop plugin, to make a perfect reflection. We had a good angle on the river that flows behind the Taj, but an area of mud extended into the water making the reflection less than ideal. Flood took care of that. Finally, I added the columns. I photographed these from the grounds of the Taj Mahal. My settings for the original picture of the river and the Taj were 1/160, f/5.0, and 800 ISO. I used a Canon 100-400mm lens for the capture.
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