Cave Temples in Dambulla

One of the hardest places to shoot - the spectacular buddhist caves in Dambulla, Sri Lanka. There's precious little natural light, almost no artificial light and it's hot and very humid inside the caves. Curiously it is still possible to take a tripod into these places to get absolutely static results - providing you pick your moment when the crowds are not too heavy. I particularly liked the doorways into the temples - these require exposure bracketing and processing in an HDR software, like Aurora HDR Pro to get the best tonal range in an otherwise impossible shooting situation.

Close up of one of the temple door knockers...

This five frame shot gives you an idea of how tricky the lighting is - bare bulbs and dark corners.. Shooting a good bracket (+/- 2 stops at least) then processing the resulting frames in an HDR application does the trick nicely.