This is the spectacular Temple of Karnak in Luxor, Egypt. You can now take a twilight and night tour of the ruins -- tripods allowed -- and this affords unique and beautiful shots of the massive columns especially with a cobalt blue sky as a backdrop. I composited the statue of the pharoah in the bottom center of the frame because in the original picture there wasn't anything of interest there. Whenever you do night photography, contrast is usually a big issue because directional artificial lights create bright highlights and very dark shadows. A digital sensor has a hard time retaining detail throughout the images, so I now use HDR with a 5-frame series of shots for virtually all of my night shooting. Because I was with a group of other tourists, and we had to 'keep up' with the group, I raised the ISO to 1600 and used an f/3.5 aperture so my shutter speeds were relatively fast. That meant the whole HDR sequence would be done within a few seconds. I used a 16mm focal length for this shot.
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