Bright and early

Beautiful. Would love to visit at this hour.

Can someone say photoshop?

To these eyes it looks like Dave Powell painted rather than photographed this.

It might be HDR

Can someone say photoshop?

Nice blue sky at 3 AM.

The sky was pretty amazing that evening. Your are correct The758 it is an HDR. It's the only way I could get enough light at that hour.

nice!

tokyonovice at 07:33 AM JST - 25th November Can someone say photoshop?

Agreed. The sky looks like just after sunset of just before sunrise. I assume this was a timed shot, so the sky should be nearly black with star streaks.

HDR or not, the sky is not that color at 3AM anywhere except near the poles during their respective summers.

The photograph makes me feel uncomfortable. It looks like a HDR one.

HDR really adds a painterly feel to pictures when it's done well, and this is done very well.

Nice shot Mr Powell.

Did they mention anywhere it was "lit up" at any other time other than 3AM?

Say 3:15AM, perhaps?

good job, looks great

nice HDR!

Looks completely unnatural. Bleeuch.

Beautiful picture.

almost all HDR pics look unnatural; not a fan of HDR pictures at all but there seems to be a growing crowd of HDR picture fans (they don't know the pictures they see are not natural and being modified for show). oh well.

sugoi ... nice pic

Looks completely unnatural. Bleeuch.

I imagine you'd say the same of a Picasso or Van Gogh. Bleaargh

I imagine you'd say the same of a Picasso or Van Gogh

Then you'd be wrong, and unwise for comparing them to photos anyway. Go back to imagining that this "photo" is anything other than bleeuaargh.

Too much photoshop

even with HDR I dont see how they would have a nice blue sky at 3 am. plain and simple.

Nice pic, but feels like white balance is a bit off. Cool nonetheless.

Would have been topped off nicely with something paranormal about it..wait,is that a smiling face in the tree on the right ?? Oh,my....

Nice but fake. Shadows don't seem to fall on the same angle. The sky is just too blue, The green on the leaves.... and oh should I go on?

I dislike HDR myself but everyone has their own taste. However the small thumbnail on the frontpage seemed like it was a screenshot for some fantasy game heh.

It struck me that if it's really 3:00 a.m., then this is a terrible waste of energy. Who is out and about at such an ungodly hour, to justify leaving the lights on?

Awesome.

If you can't recognise or appreciate the artistry in this shot despite subjective feelings about HDR or what constitutes photography you are quite simply a philistine.

What a beautiful photo! He successfully amazed people to make them think it is not real. Very skillful, great job!

Wow... cool photo. God job Dave!

Why does it have to be postprocessed HDR?

I get this kind of result with something like 30sec exposure (that includes the bluish sky at 3am)

I agree it does not look very natural to our eyes but hey, if one did have eyes sensitive enough to see this bright in the middle of the night why wouldn't that be what he'd see?

needs some LED xmas lights.

Whatever the tech used, it is such a soothing image for my eyes and heart. Thanks photographer.

It is easy to criticize, and it is hard to do it! I just love that photo because it is beautiful, it is that simple. Thank you Dave!

Put me in with the philistines, because I'm another person who is bored with all the HDR lately. That aside, it's a nice shot! Technically alot harder than many people think.

To the blue-sky doubters, I would love to see you try and put a blue sky in behind all those branches and leaves, that would really be a mission. Blue sky comes from long exposure, colour is just reflected light. Just because it's dark to our eyes at 3am doesn't mean that colour disappears.

I can appreciate the image, but I don't have like it. I would put this in the same catagory as 3D photos.

Lunchbox: It could have been exposed for an hour or even hours.

So much for Japan being "eco" all the time. How much electricity are they wasting lighting up this temple? And to what end? A few oohs and ahhs?

For those interested, here is how I took the photo:

First, yes it was actually taken at 3am, actually at 3:20am. The camera settings were ISO 400, 16mm @ f/6.7. It is three exposures 6 seconds, 20 seconds, 30 seconds, blended in Photomatix Pro to bring out the range of color.

Saturday was a full moon (or close to it) so with the long exposures and clouds in the sky, it light up very bright. The only photoshopping was to increase the blacks so the details come out more. I wish I knew how to photoshop a sky, a little darker would be better.

Great shot, kind of reminds me of a Hiro Yamagata painting.

3 am? Why is the sky so blue? Nice shot - should use it on a mochi box.

The best special effects are the ones you don't see.

Nice but a bit surreal.

It's amazing the images you get with a long exposure time. I have some photos I've taken with long (5-10 seconds in near darkness) exposures and they always have more brilliant colors than the ones I take in "good" light.

Made my day, can we get the hi-res somewhere?

I think that it's quite beautiful!

Why light up???? its already bright that time; check the sky!

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension of not only sight and Photoshop, but of mind; a journey into a wonderous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the temple up ahead -- your next stop, the Twilight Zone!

It's a great shot, especially the sky, which would not have looked that way at 3:30 so must have been a nice surprise. Thanks for sharing.

Puzzling photo...paint by colors?

"interesting" would be my definition for this pic. I use HDR myself sometimes but mainly in daytime or trying to make a dark stew on a white plate look delicious, but not at night. But I think this pic doesn't convey the atmosphere of the night, no dark corners. As for HDR, it is not something unnatural, but the exact opposite: trying to get the technic where nature is already, eg our eyes adjusting the dark and bright spots automatically. A few years ago it started with software, as the photographer mentioned, now every good digital camera has it already built in, taking 3 pics and "blending" them into one which has the big advantage that results are there instantly and can be adjusted. And in a few years, maybe the sensors inside the camera will start working like the human eye: adjusting off-light spots automatically, and there will be no more dark faces or bright-white scenery behind the open window!

I love this pic! If you look at the trees and the way the light falls on them, you can clearly see that the light does not come from the sky and things look the way they do when lit up at night but then you look up at the sky and it is so bright for that hour...due to the long exposures... and it gives a really cool, surreal effect to it all! Very other worldly!

Interesting, it's like a vision from a dream

Is this really a photo? It looks like a cartoon. Either way I give it a thumbs up.

The background appears more 'real' than the foreground. It plays tricks on your eyes.

It's interesting, but the HDR is a bit overdone I think. I like HDR that enhances the emotion of the image. Graphically this is interesting but I don't think the blended exposure adds any meaning to the image.

Nice, but it looks more like a CGI than a real picture.

This looks like an image by computer graphic design. The photographic image should provide half-tone and gray-scale if taken by a camera.

Stunning photograph!

Wow! That's a nice Picture! I thought it was a painting at first.

The sky was pretty amazing that evening. Your are correct The758 it is an HDR. It's the only way I could get enough light at that hour.

Erh, what? Long exposure is how you get enough light. Sorry to say, but all the HDR did in this case was take away all the contrast ("compensating" with saturation) leaving a rather dull, flat, and oversaturated image (HDR processing far too often results in LDR images). The HDR processing may also have removed any star streaks present in the source images, as they differ from one to the next. Try a few different single exposures next time and choose the best one - beats HDR any day.

Apart from that, very nice indeed! (Just for fun I tried a simple darkening, subsequently desaturating it somewhat - and completely - and although marred by the artefacts of HDR and JPEG processing, it really is a nice picture.)

Wow, what a spectacular shot!

Beautiful scene.

nice one...

dmk2010 at 12:34 PM JST - 25th November It is easy to criticize, and it is hard to do it!

Actually, something like this is now very easy to do thanks to the computerization of photography.