SPECIAL FEATURE
ABOVE THE CITY
OF ANGELS
THAI-BORN BHUMINAN
P I YAT H A S A N A N W A S O N LY A B L E
T O A P P R E C I AT E B A N G K O K ’ S
VIBRANCY FROM ABOVE, WHEN
HE RETURNED FROM ABROAD
PHOTO: BHUMINAN PIYATHASANAN
This picture, named Bangkok Dusk, was
taken from the 84th floor of the Baiyoke
Tower, Bangkok, giving a spectacular
360-degree-panoramic view, similar to
that enjoyed from the rooftop bar of the
Banyan Tree Bangkok. Normally, you
can’t take a long-exposure shot here
because it’s a rotating observatory. To
get a handheld, sharp image with a wide
lens (such as 16-35 millimetres), you
have to set the shutter speed to about
1/30 seconds or more.
Fortunately, on the day I took this
shot, the rotating system was down for
maintenance and the security officers
were happy for me to set up the shot,
which I took with an eight-second
shutter speed on a firm tripod.
For this picture, two vertical shots
were taken with a Nikon D800e and
merged to achieve a vertical panoramic
view. In addition to handling the lost
highlight of the image, I took another
under-exposure shot for highlight
recovery in post processing.
As a landscape photographer,
I enjoy all kinds of light situations,
especially sunrise, sunset and night.
Taking photos at night, or twilight, is
a lot of fun and can be challenging. An
ordinary scene is always made more
interesting in low-light as you can play
with different techniques.
Night photography is not difficult,
but some people are concerned about
how to get high-quality night shots.
Low-light forces you to be more careful
U N D E R T H E B A N YA N T R E E
01/06
2016
Bhuminan is a Nikon ambassador and a serious
amateur photographer known as AtomicZen. He has
been taking photos of landscapes and seascapes for
almost six years. After graduating from university
in Sydney, he returned to Thailand to work for
Thammasat Business School (TBS) as an academic
lecturer in marketing, as well as a freelance
landscape photographer, a digital darkroom tutor,
and a public speaker for Nikon, Thailand.
with the setup of the camera. I usually
pick my night photography locatio