Arabic lamps
I took this photograph while visiting the Desert Islands Resort in Sir Bani Yas Island off the coast of Abu Dhabi and as you probably guessed already, this is the lobby of the hotel. It’s one of the more impressive lobbies I’ve seen and one of the most interesting features is this collection of Arabic lamps greeting the tourists as they make their way in. I managed to sneak upstairs close to the manager’s office and take a few quick shots that I put together into this HDR. On the technical side, it’s made out of 7 exposures with a 1E.V. step. After tone-mapping it in Photomatix, I’ve applied a few curves and the Topaz Adjust plug-in to bring out the contrast in the lamps.
On an unrelated note, Thursday I will be talking at GeekFest in Dubai about HDR photography and how to not over do it when you tone-map your images with something like Photomatix. Those of you that follow me on Twitter already know that I’ve asked you to decide which photograph I should go through and explain how I achieved the end result. The two images were this one and this one and as it stands now the “After the storm” image is winning by quite a margin.