A visit to Angkor Wat has been at the top of my list of places to visit for a long time and I recently had the opportunity to spend three days there. I’d never hired a photo guide before but given my limited time and the fact the various sites are pretty spread out (the Angkor archeological complex covers an area of 150 square miles), I felt this would help make my time spent there more productive. After some research, I settled on Chris Cusick, a British photographer who has been leading private tours to the various sites around the temple complex for the past six years. From the look of Chris’ portfolio I could tell he was a talented photographer, and as an added bonus it turned out that he was well-versed in the culture and history of Cambodia and a foodie whose restaurant recommendations were spot on. We spent a couple of months going back and forth on how to best map out an agenda to blend my desire to see the most interesting parts of the park as well as the photographic highlights.

Chris has visited Angkor hundreds of times and knows every nook and cranny of all the major sites, the ideal time of day and season to photograph them, and how best to avoid the increasingly large crowds, many of whom are first time travelers from China. For anyone that might be planning a visit, here’s how we organized my trip.

Our first afternoon started out with a visit to one of the larger temples at Angkor, Preah Khan. It is nicely maintained with a handful on impressive carvings and is gaining popularity with tourists looking for less crowded parts of the park to visit. After a couple of hours there, we drove to the nearby South Gate of Angkor Thom where we watched the sunset from a bridge lined with a collection of Khmer sculptures.

We were up early the following morning to arrive for the opening of Ta Prohm, known as the “Tomb Raider” temple from its appearance in the 2018 movie starring Angelina Jolie. It's one of the more crowded locations in the park but we had a pretty quiet hour or so until the busloads of tourists began to arrive. Even so, the only place we ran into any crowds was near the famous doorway which has been overtaken by the roots of an enormous strangler fig tree that seemingly every visitor has their photo taken in front of. But there are many other interesting and photogenic spots around this area and some of my best images of the trip were taken here.

Our next stop involved hiking along a ridge that connects two of the original stone entrances of Angkor Thom and runs north from the East Gate to the Ghost Gate (Victory Gate). Both are adorned with the large carved Khmer faces that Angkor is famous for and are located in a very quiet and peaceful part of the complex.

We then had a quick visit to Ta Nei temple before a break to grab lunch back in town and get out of the worst of the midday heat (and the harsh overhead lighting that makes good images hard to produce).

It was back to a different section of Angkor Thom in the mid-afternoon where we viewed hundreds of impressive carvings covering a maze of walls at the Terrace of the Leper King.

Just across the street was the Preah Pithu group of temples where we spent a short amount of time exploring while waiting for some warm late afternoon light to arrive at our next destination, Bayon. You have probably seen pictures of this large temple, the upper level of which is covered with approximately two hundred serene looking Khmer faces. Our visit there could not have been better timed as the temple was closing the following day for a five year long reconstruction project.

We finished up the day with a quick sunset visit to the main temple of Angkor Wat, the most famous and heavily visited place in the park. It is the largest religious site in the world and the wall that encloses it is 2.2 miles long. No trip to Cambodia is complete with at least a short visit here, yet as impressive as it is to see, I didn't consider it one of the photographic highlights of the trip as I found it hard to come up with an interesting photo of it that wasn't a cliche.

The following morning we drove an hour north from our base in the town of Siem Reap to Banteay Srei, a tenth century site outside of the main Angkor complex that is known for having the most intricate red sandstone carvings of any temple in the country. It’s constructed in a totally different style from the rest of Angkor, has been painstakingly restored and was well worth the visit. Plus we got to see a little bit of the countryside on the way there and back.

Our final stop was at the Buddhist temple of Banteay Kdei, a little gem of a place that was one of our favorites. To put it in perspective, this "small" temple probably covers fifty acres and would be the highlight of most ancient sites around the world, but gets somewhat overlooked considering the number of more elaborate temples that are scattered around the Angkor archeological site. I got most of my favorite close up images of carvings here, like the ones below, plus one of a woman praying that I liked as well.

For those of you considering a trip here, I’ve posted some additional information in the Travel and Photography tips section on my site. To view the full size versions of these images and several more, go to the Angkor Wat tab on my home page.