Incredible Image: 24-hours shot from Greece’s Temple of Poseidon

After a moment of inspiration and hours of planning and preparation, photographer Chris Kotsiopoulos created this beautiful image portraying 24 hours, shot from Greece’s Temple of Poseidon, also known as Sounion promontory. It took him 12 hours to pull together and process a single image that included over 500 star trails, 35 shots of the Sun and 25 landscape pictures.

Waiting for a clear day, Kotsiopoulos shot the above image on December 30th-31st of 2010. He had to stay at the same place for approximately 30 hours, on location 2-3 hours before sunrise in order to make the preparations and test shooting and an extra 2-3 hours the second day so as to shoot part of the Sun’s sequence that he lost the first morning due to clouds.

In the morning, he took photos with his camera and tripod facing east. He captured dozens of shots throughout the day and night of the landscape from east to west, then west to east at night. He also took images of the Sun and Moon’s courses across the sky, from sunrise to sunset and to sunrise. Kotsiopoulos recorded the Sun’s position exactly every 15 minutes using an intervalometer, with an astrosolar filter adjusted to the camera lens. The “all-night” star trail shots lasted almost 11 hours. Finally, he took a series of night-to-day transition shots.