Sunrise in Angkor Wat — CESAR MENDEZ | WORLD TRAVEL PHOTOGRAPHY

If you are a landscape/travel photographer, and somebody ask you about the most famous place to photograph a sunrise, most would answer without a doubt, Angkor Wat, and by famous, I mean that everybody knows about it, some love it, and some hate it.

I consider myself very fortunate to photograph the sunrise in Angkor Wat main temple around six times, this does not make me any expert on the subject, but I can share a little bit of my experience.

First I would like to start with some of the comments that I catch from the other tourists that visit the temple during the sunrise, many of those are negative comments, like, “this place is so over rated” or “the sunrise is not that awesome”, and I get it, now a days with the technology that is bringing us together, is also separating us from reality, making many people very hard to impress, and I think this has to do with all the information that surround us every single day, fake information, fake images, and fake way of living also, we don’t know what’s real anymore, and people is changing, and they tend not to enjoy the great cultural sites like Angkor, or great simple things like a sunrise in any part of the world, and I don’t mean this in the wrong way, but they are just seeing and not watching, they don’t realize how fortunate they are by standing in front of this amazing temple, it is magical just to be there, watching the sunrise behind Angkor Wat, the long casting shadows after the sun peaked above the structure, even if the place is packed full of people watching the sunrise, you have to immerse in the moment and enjoy, how fortunate you are that you are experiencing this place.

There is a photographer that I follow, his name is Rick Sammon, he is a great photographer and a great teacher, and he is very into quotes, and I do love one of his quotes that say:

“We are so fortunate to be photographers, because I believe that photographers see the world in a different way than everybody else”

Rick Sammon

And this is what I mean, we do see world differently, we enjoy the light, the shadows, the trees, the water, the sounds of nature, all the elements that surround us and we try to capture all of that in our pictures.

Angkor Wat is a beautiful temple, and to photograph it at it’s best you need to be there before sunrise, fortunately for Cambodians, unfortunately for photographers, the tourism has increased immensely for the past 20 years, since the Angkor Wat site was nominated UNESCO World Heritage in 1992, the number of visitors increased exponentially by the year, having 7,650 visitors in 1993, over 1 million in 2007, over two million by 2012, over four million by 2016, this means that you won’t be alone for that sunrise shot.

People gather around the water pond to photograph the reflection of Angkor Wat temple

But don’t let this put you down, it is true that there are sometimes hundreds of people gather in front of the pond where you see the temple reflection, but also you need to know that the whole Angkor Wat complex is huge! I have explored the temples for six days divided in two trips, and so far, I haven’t seen it all.

In fact, the main reason for this blog post is to guide you on how to do your best to get that iconic photograph of the sunrise.

So, once you arrive in Siem Reap, the first you need to do is to hire your transportation, and there are three main ways to move around.

- bicycle or moto bike

- tuk tuk

- or by car.

Bicycle

So, the bicycle, it is not recommended if is your first time in Angkor Wat, this is because you would not know exactly where to go to find the places you want, and if you expect to be there before everyone else to claim the best spot, you’ll be for sure in disadvantage; also, you need to know that from temple to temple it could be 5 km distance. Saying this, if you don’t care more about getting there early and you love to explore by yourself and mostly, you love to exercise, and then by any means, hire a bicycle, it is cheap and fun.

Hiring a Car

Touring by car, this choice is for you if comfort is a must, you have more space for yourself, air conditioning, free dust mouths, the monkeys cannot attack you (juuuust kidding, although the monkeys could attack you, but only if you offer them treats or behave aggressively towards them, so be careful), it is more expensive, but not as fun if you choose to ride a bicycle or a tuk tuk.

This monkey robbed my wife some cookies from inside her back pack

Tuk Tuk

Now, my personal choice always has been riding the tuk tuk, I would love to ride a bicycle, but because of my tight schedule, I can’t afford to lose time moving from one place to the other; maybe on my next trip I’ll rent the bicycle and take my time. But let me tell you, riding the tuk tuk is super fun, it is easy to hop on and off, easy to stop anywhere you want, is very comfortable, is cheap, much faster than the bicycle and you could get attacked by a gang of monkeys (just kidding again, just be careful with the monkeys).

After you chose your way of transportation, the first thing you need to do, is to buy the tickets for the Angkor Wat complex; on my first trip to Cambodia, we used to buy the tickets near the entrance of the complex and it was very convenient, but now, they built a main office somewhere in Siem Reap and you must buy your tickets there. They have a single entrance ticket, three-day ticket and seven-day ticket, my trips to Siem Reap have been always three to four days max, so the three-day ticket worked just fine for my needs.

There are some concerns about the new prices for the tickets, it is the first time like in 22 years that they increase the cost, but they are going a little extreme, the increases are around 85% more than the previous costs.

Our three day pass it costs us $40 USD in 2015, now it will cost $62 USD, but looking at the bright side, you´ll get a wonderful mugshot without stepping the police station

Now, let’s talk about the sunrise photo at the main temple; the super iconic shot in front of the water pond with Angkor Wat Temple reflecting on it like a mirror, the one that gathers hundreds of people every morning, to get this shot, here’s what you need to do.

Many years ago, you could enter the complex as early as you wanted, but now is not possible, now they let the people in at 5 o’clock sharp, so your best bet is to be in front of everybody waiting behind the rope at least 15 minutes before 5 am, this means that you will have to set up your alarm clock around 4 am, and ask you driver to pick you up at a time accordingly to your hotel location, for me, I stayed always at the same hotel, it was very near the entrance of Angkor, so, 4:30 worked just fine, I was there, ready 15 minutes before the opening. Don´t forget your flashlight because you will be walking in the dark.

Once they loose the rope and let everybody in, you need to start walking at a very fast pace, there are two water ponds where you can take the photo, you will be looking for the left pond, and so, you have to be the first on the scene; maybe you’ll say that you could be on first row of the edge of the pond even if you are not the first one to be there, maybe 50 or a 100 people get to be on first row, but let me tell you, when you have a composition in mind, you have just a couple of feet between the good composition and the alright composition, the good composition that I’m talking about is the one where you can see the quincunx of five towers (Quincunx is a geometric pattern of five point arrange in a cross, with four of them forming a square or rectangle), if you just place yourself about anywhere around the water pond, you’ll see between three or four towers, because the angle of view or parallax does not allow you to see all five towers, that’s one of the reasons why you should be the first arriving. Now, where is this place exactly? See the picture below, I point the rough position. Make sure to position yourself on the very edge of the water, this way you prevent anyone trying to stand right in front of you.

You will want to position somewhere around the red circle if you want to photograph the five towers

Let’s say you manage to get there first, and you claimed your stake, now is time to prepare your camera gear, in the dark, so, this is where it comes in handy knowing your gear like the palm of your hand, up to the date of this blog post, there is no artificial lights in Angkor Wat and I really hope it stays that way, so it doesn’t loose that magical feel of being an almost untouched place by the modern civilization.

The composition of this shot is simple but beautiful, pretty straight forward, and because the sun will raise behind the main temple this is going to be an almost complete silhouette, you’ll just give a hint of detail in the shadows of the front façade of Angkor. One of the rules of composition it says that if you place your horizon line death center in your frame, is instant death to your picture, but here is a great example on how the rules are meant to be broken under the right situations, because we are shooting the temple and the reflection on the water, we have to compose in a way where we see both, the temple and the reflection complete, so, to achieve this you will have to center your compositions, and works awesome for this kind of shots.

Now, this is my suggestion on the classic shot, but you have free artistic license to choose your own composition.

My camera settings were:

- Camera mounted on a tripod.

- Aperture priority, 1/20s, f/8.0, ISO 64

- 3 Bracketed exposures (from -2 to +2)

- Nikkor 28-300 mm at 40 mm

Taken at sunrise

NIKON D810, Nikkor 28-300 mm f/3.5-f/5.6 @ 40 mm, f/8.0, 1/20s, ISO 64

From here and on, you just have to shoot some frames every couple minutes as the light changes until the sun completely rises high enough and the light becomes harsh.

Enjoy yourselves, enjoy exploring the Angkor Wat complex, enjoy the food, enjoy the people, relax and have fun, always with responsibility and respect to the everybody.

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