Bagan

I love “scape photography”: landscape, cityscape or seascape photography! Some places absolutely overwhelm you just for being there, and you can stand and look for hours.

But the thing is Myanmar it’s all about people, capturing close portraits and subtle moments of people in their everyday life, young and old. There’s no way the mind can be diverted toÂ scenery, there’s too much going on at eye level.Â But for everything there’s always an exception, and at Myanmar the exception is called Bagan.

NIKON D90 (85mm, f/8, 1/100 sec, ISO200)

Bagan was the Burmese capital between from the 9th Â century until the Mongol invasion in the end of 13th century, when slowly came it’s decline. What’s makes it so special? Like all Burmese towns of that time, and still some smaller villages today, all construction is made of wood, from the most humble house to the royal palaces. All but religious buildings, the only ones made with stone or bricks and the only ones that survived throughout the centuries.Â And what you get to day is a surreal landscape, a vast plain with trees and farmlands scattered with pagodas, more than two thousand, roughly half of the five thousand that once existed here.

Nothing beats climbing one of the many pagodas and enjoy what use to be the capital of an empire.

NIKON D300S (20mm, f/7.1, 1/50 sec, ISO3200)
NIKON D90 (85mm, f/7.1, 1/500 sec, ISO100)
NIKON D90 (85mm, f/7.1, 1/400 sec, ISO100)
NIKON D90 (85mm, f/7.1, 1/400 sec, ISO100)
NIKON D90 (85mm, f/7.1, 1/800 sec, ISO100)
NIKON D90 (85mm, f/7.1, 1/800 sec, ISO100)
NIKON D90 (85mm, f/9, 6 sec, ISO200)
NIKON D90 (85mm, f/7.1, 1/500 sec, ISO100)
NIKON D90 (85mm, f/7.1, 1/320 sec, ISO100)
NIKON D90 (85mm, f/8, 1/100 sec, ISO200)
NIKON D300S (12mm, f/9, 1/250 sec, ISO100)
NIKON D300S (14mm, f/7.1, 1/160 sec, ISO200)
NIKON D300S (18mm, f/8, 1/125 sec, ISO200)
NIKON D300S (16mm, f/9, 1/60 sec, ISO100)