Jordan explored – Petra by Night

One of the most memorable experiences of our recent trip to Jordan was experiencing Petra, the ancient capital of the Nabataean Empire, by night. On three evenings per week, visitors can take the one mile passage through the narrow gorge known as Siq down to the legendary Al-Khazneh (Pharao’s Treasury), with the walkway being illuminated by six thousand candles.

As during the day, the walk starts at the Visitor Center down to the entrance to the Siq. Along the way are (real!) candles in bags, placed at regular intervals. Once the eye gets used to the dark, it is amazingly easy to find your way in the dim illumination. Seeing the mountains below the starry sky is truly fantastic. The experience gets much more magic upon entering the Siq canyon, with its 70m high walls and only 2m wide at its narrowest point. The dimly illuminated rocks, and above the spectacular night sky

And then, finally, even more fascinating as during the day, we could finally see the first glimpses of the magic facade of Al Khazneh (The Treasury) appear through the high walls of the canyon.

The area in front of the world famous royal tomb carved out of the rocks more than two thousand years ago (read about Petra’s history in my previous post) and that was prominently featured in the movie “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”, was illuminated by a thousand candles as well.

There were also light projections onto the facade, which, honestly, were a bit over the top. While yellowish light was ok and in tone with the candles, there was also bright green and deep blue projections. The colors were changing so fast, that it was actually kind of tricky to catch the moment with the yellowish color tones. All visitors sat down on mats laid out in the dust, Bedouins served tea. Then came a 30 minute performance of Bedouins playing traditional tunes and telling the story of Petra.

I took all my photos with the Olympus OM-D E-M1X and my magic 17mm F/1.2 . For the last image I changed to the 12-100mm F/4 to shoot the Treasury at 12mm wide angle. I took all images hand held. Although there were people bringing their tripods, but setting it up between all the people, especially in the narrow Siq, would not have been practical. Apart from lugging the extra weight along the two mile round trip.

All photos in this post are single exposures, the RAW files post-processed in Lightroom Classic. The tonal range of the RAW files (especially in the image of the candle-lit canyon with the starry sky visible overhead) blew me away.

Stay tuned for more posts from our trip to Jordan.

If you are looking for tips and inspirations around photography for the upcoming weekend, check out my free Learning Center.

On by Pixpa I found a great article called Beginner’s Guide to Night Photography covering topics like camera equipment for night time photos, various techniques and tips of night photography in detail that is very much worth checking out.

Wish you a great Friday!

Marcus

Related Posts:

Castle in the Dark

Namibia Starry Night (and how I photographed it)

Life in the Big Apple

Instant Inspiration (10) – Nocturnal Skyline