Keep watching this blog & you will have an opportunity to go on a cultural photo tour where you can set up your tripod in the same place where mine was when I took these images.  Wait & see if the sunrise you witenss is more spectacular, or your skills better, so that you produce better images than mine!  

On the morning after capturing the equatorial sunrise on Borobudur temple, near Jogjakarta in Central Java, we cycled in the early morning darkness to a nearby hill, climbed a few minutes in the dark and awaited the next day’s spectacle.

Disappointment was not in the cards.  As the first amber glow of morning twilight grew over the horizon, rows of tropical forest emerged from the darkness--immersed in a light fog, Borobudur’s shrine standing strikingly above it all.

Moments later the sun began to cast an aspen glow on Mount Merapi’s smoking peak, nearly 10,000 feet tall, as the Java countryside still slumbered below this most dangerous volcano in the world.

The puffs of fog began to take on warmer tones as the sun angled to shine directly on them.

Then the blinding sphere burst over the horizon, painting the Java plains near Jogjakarta in its bright orange heat.

This is a place packed with superlatives—Borobudur—the world’s largest ancient Buddhist shrine, in the shadow of Mount Merapi—the world’s most dangerous volcano. 

As one might expect—with so many extremes per square inch, it’s a fascinating landscape to photograph.

Check out our Sept. 14-25 Java-Bali Photo Tour & be sure to sign-up for the extension tour to Jogja, Central Java.  

See more at  www.thedigitaltrekker.com/2013/01/east-java-bali-photo-tour/