Stairways to the Sky, a photo from Mountain, Ilocos

Photographer's Note

Panoramic view showing the magnificence of the famed rice terraces in Northern Philippines. The rice terraces are a living project of the Cordillera people converting mountains into agricultural land dating as far back as 4,000 years ago. The rice terraces of the Philippine Cordilleras were designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995.

This was taken in a less traveled area north of Bontoc. The photo was scanned at a very high resolution (7200 dpi) from a slide, post processed in Photoshop (autolevels, gaussian blur, and despeckle to remove scratches and dirt, and resizing then unsharp mask).

rage_tm trouve(nt) cette note utile

Critiques | Translate

chalcone (761) 2003-10-17 11:00

Hi Manong, super super scene!!! I wanted to post something from Banaue too, but the scanner's not cooperative tonight (it's from 1994). This does look off the beaten path; at least, not close to Banga-ag or Viewpoint. In any case, this makes it so tempting to see it again. BTW, the terraces look slightly tilted to the right. Perhaps rotating it 0.5 degrees counterclockwise would correct this.

numahr (350) 2003-12-16 12:30

Wonderful scene! I had never seen rice terrasses stairways climbing that high... really impressive about human's bid to build a friendly environment with work and patience.

Josh69 (1437) 2003-12-18 3:51

I've been there, it is very pretty isn't it. I think it does need a 0.5 CCW tilt like No 1 says and also maybe a slight increase in saturation. OTOH, I just like over-saturated photos, so maybe it's OK. Beautiful place!

rage_tm (623) 2004-10-25 21:07

Hi Ken, I like your panoramic view of the Cordillera rice terraces. Framing (considering just a few sky presented) and composition is excellent.

I always wanted to go to this place..and have the same phot captured here. Nice Catch!

bend1k (934) 2005-03-16 1:47