Reclining Buddha at Po Win Taung
It had rained the day before we visited the Po Win Taung caves and we were told that the floors of the caves were filled with mud. This cave was more like a room built onto the side of the mountain and it was clean…swept up every few minutes by a caretaker. Maybe he swept so often because the multitudes of monkeys that lived on the mountain scattered seed husks, and the paper cones that the seeds came in, everywhere.
The monkeys crawled over ever surface, watching for someone to feed them. When food was scattered on the ground, they went into a frenzy. If you have ever seen a monkey attack someone you’d have been wary as I was. Luckily the women who sold the seeds also had sticks which they brandished at the monkeys when they came too close.
We spent our time trying to get a set up shot in one of the caves using candles and a local girl. It wasn’t easy to get the exposure right. I resorted to my flash and had some success, but for this photo of the reclining Buddha, I just increased my ISO. The ceilings of the caves were painted with frescoes and to me these are more beautiful than the statues.
There were many, many times on this trip that we were shooting in low light. I almost always had my tripod, but didn’t always have my flash. I’d just bump up my ISO to what ever it took. It’s either increase your ISO and get noise out the gazoo or don’t take the pic. And I’m taking the pic! I’ve got some de-noise software and it does a pretty good job. Also, I’m thinking, hoping, that one day the de-noise software will be perfected and we can go back and fix all of our low light pix.