How tall is tall enough?
Apparently just over 850 meters is high enough! Although there have been lots of rumours going around Dubai (one of them being that the top pole can be raised even more!) it seems that the final height of the Burj Dubai is standing at around 850 meters. That height creates plenty of problems when you’re trying to photograph the tower while including some of its surroundings, like the very impressive, just opened, “largest fountain in the world”.
I hope you’ll enjoy this one since I spent quite a lot of time on it blending two landscape shots into one vertical photograph and doing a lot of perspective adjustments in Photoshop. I know it’s quite a tall image and if it doesn’t fit in your browser I recommend using the CTRL- (Apple- for those of you on Mac) shortcut in your browser to zoom out.
Souk Al Bahar
Yesterday afternoon I decided to go out and shoot around the Dubai Mall and Souk Al Bahar, braving the Dubai heat and turning into a human sweating machine. The reason I chose this place was because last time I went there with David from Chromasia, the weather didn’t cooperate and the results were fairly disappointing. This time around, I spent a lot more time looking for good locations, got a few “blogable” shots and didn’t even get chased away by the security guards!
Now to the first image… It’s an HDR panorama made out of two landscape shots (each made out of 7 exposures) blended in Photoshop. I wanted to go for a more natural look as opposed to the usual high-contrast HDR shots so I kept the sliders to a minimum in Photomatix. I would be happy to hear what you think…
UPDATE: For those of you that can access Flickr (yes it is still blocked in the UAE!) I have uploaded a bigger version of this photograph here.
Domes
If you live in the UAE (or anywhere else for that matter!) and you haven’t been to the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi I suggest you make some time and visit. It’s an impressive mosque and if my memory serves me right, it is the biggest in the world after Mecca and Medina. Unlike the ones in Mecca and Medina, this one can be visited by non-muslims. You should try and be there early morning or late afternoon, when the sun hits the domes at an angle creating a very “1001 nights” landscape.
Through the doors
This morning while I was looking through Stuck in Customs I noticed Trey has posted a great picture of the crowds approaching the Taj Mahal. That reminded me of a shot I took early morning at the Taj also through one of the doors. Not much to tell you about it except that this one, as opposed to most of my shots, it’s not an HDR and the processing was minimal. Just a couple of curves here and there, but I kinda like it. Also, if you want to see more of my shots from India I posted some here. 
On the beach
Before the summer arrives here in Dubai I always try and take as many photographs as possible so I have enough shots to post throughout the slower summer months when the heat and humidity makes it difficult to go out and shoot new material. This summer I’m hoping things will be a bit different since in July I will be spending over 3 weeks travelling from Kathmandu to Moscow, via Lhasa, Beijing and Irkutsk which should give me more than enough blog material. However there are still 3 more weeks to go until my trip, so today I was looking through some of the shots I took in March in Musandam, in the north of Oman and I found this image of a traditional fishing boat (dhow), washed up on the beach at low tide. I think it would have looked a lot better if I would have taken it with my 12-24mm lens, but I didn’t have it with me at the time, so 18mm will have to do.
On another note, I did a couple of cosmetic changes to the blog which now displays the latest 10 blog posts instead of the latest 3. Hopefuly this will make it easier to see some of the shots that you might have missed. I have also added a link where you can vote for my blog in the 2009 photoblog awards.
Photo of the week - Branching out
This week: Baobab tree in Salalah, Sultanate of Oman
When we were in Salalah earlier this year we weren’t very lucky with the weather. A sand storm went through the area just before we got there and the dust stayed up in the air the whole time we were there. This makes Salalah one of the many places on my list where I would love to go back to. But enough complaining about the weather. This particular photograph is of a baobab tree and Salalah must be one of the few places (if not the only one!) in the Middle East where these trees grow.
London Business School
Doing a 180 degree turn from my last few shots of planes, propellers and water drops, today I decided to post a couple of images that I’m happy with from a commercial shoot I did a couple of weeks ago for London Business School (LBS) in Dubai. They regularly hold 2-3 days workshops in the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) attended by investors from all over the world. LBS also runs a Dubai-London Executive MBA here in Dubai with teachers flown from London every few weeks.
As for the technical details for these two images, there’s not a lot I can tell you, except that both were shot using 2 small speedlights. In the left image the speedlights were using a flash diffuser and in the right image, one flash was shot through an umbrella while the other one was shot through a diffuser.
| Posted in » Dubai, Europe, The Middle East, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom
Photo of the week - More propellers
This week: De Havilland DH-114 Heron 2, Sharjah, UAE
This will probably be my last shot from the Mahatta Museum in Sharjah (I have one more that I might post, but not yet sure about it). Just like my previous shot from the same location, this is also a photograph of a De Havilland airplane that was in service with Gulf Aviation. One interesting fact about this plane is that it actually carries a fake identification number (G-ANFE) and it was originally owned by the West African Airways Corporation under a different id.
Water drop
Today I thought I should take a break from the airplanes of Sharjah and post a bit of studio photography. David Hobby posted at Strobist a tutorial on how to photograph water drops and the other night I gave it a try. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be and I’m quite happy with the results. For this particular photo I used an SB800 Nikon flash with half a blue gel and half a red gel bounced into a white paper in the back of the water drop.
Photo of the week - The de Havilland Comet
This week: The cockpit of the de Havilland Comet, Mahatta Fort Museum, Sharjah
As I mentioned on Twitter, I’ve got a couple more “bloggable” shots from my weekend visit to the Mahatta Fort Museum in Sharjah which I will be posting over the next couple of weeks. Don’t worry, I’m not turning the blog into a plane museum, but I really think that some of the history depicted in the Mahatta Museum is very interesting, particularly for those of us that live in this part of the world.
Today’s shot gives you a glimpse into the cockpit of the first ever jet plane to enter commercial service, the de Havilland Comet. It first flew in 1949 and in the Persian Gulf was operated by Gulf Aviation (now known as Gulf Air). The plane had its share of problems due to metal fatigue which, in 1954, resulted in a number of famous crashes. National Geographic’s “Air Crash Investigation” had an entire episode about the Comet disasters and although I couldn’t find a link to that particular documentary, here are some extracts on YouTube.
UPDATE: The video I linked was rubbish! I just watched the whole thing now and it’s terrible! Try this one instead.
