The Dubai Life

These days I'm starting to make myself think differently about what I am trying to show in a photograph. I have never thought of myself as a deep photography thinker. I am not attracted to photographs with agendas or messages, and certainly not pretentious arty photographs. I think I instantly know if I like a photo or not, and that is usually down to the visual beauty of the picture. Of course, a photograph can be emotional, but as most of you know, I am not really a people photographer. I do like processing those photographs, but I am always much more interested in a particular scene, and if people are in that scene then great, but for me, you don't need a face to feel emotion.

One of the aspects of a photograph I am hearing more and more of though, and it is this aspect I am trying to get into my head when I take a picture, is storytelling. I'd have never agreed a couple of years ago that a photograph can tell a story. Maybe I would have said it can represent a particular time and circumstance, but it can't actually tell a story. What makes me think differently now though, is that telling a story with a photograph is different to telling a story with words. The story in the photograph does not have a narrative, and it is up to the viewer to write it. But what the photograph does give you are the elements to create that story. The story of a time. The story of a place. Not of course with a beginning, middle and end, but of a moment that has just been frozen in time.

However, you look at this picture, I always kept thinking that it tells a story. Again, not necessarily a deep and meaningful one, but of a certain place in time. The story I think it tells is of The Dubai Life, but that's the great thing about photography - a different story is created for every single person that sees a picture.

Dubai Lights I

This time last year I was lucky enough to visit Miami, as part of a company partner meeting (I work for a company that deals largely in the international market), and this year the selected destination for this meeting was Dubai. I reluctantly agreed to go when I was invited, and even more reluctantly took my D700, when I was asked if I would take pictures for the company of the event. I am being terribly sarcastic of course, as 4/5 days in Dubai gave me the opportunity to picture this part of the middle east, when I was and was not working (which was not often).

The hotel we stayed at was on the Palm Jumeirah complex, which from the beach gave beautiful views of the skyscrapers in the Dubai Marina area, especially when they lit up at night. Though I did not take my real tripod for the trip, I did take my gorillapod (Joby), which though not at all designed to carry a D700, nevertheless gave me the opportunity to take long exposure pictures like the one above, which simply would not have been possible without it.

As the title implies, this will be the first of a few 'Dubai Lights' pictures, as I took quite a few at different angles and exposures. Picking a favourite out of them at the moment, is way too difficult.

So, plenty of pictures to come out of Dubai, returning on Tuesday as normal.

Jerusalem

Jerusalem, perhaps the most famous and legendary city to ever exist. Wars have been fought over Jerusalem for thousands of years and continue to do so. It has been completely destroyed and rebuilt twice during it's long history, and of course is a key pilgrimage sight for followers of Christianity, Judaism and Islam.

With my Wife and I's holiday to Egypt recently, came the opportunity for an excursion to The Holy Land, with the main focus being Jerusalem. We sacrificed a trip to Cairo in favour of Jerusalem, which given the instability of the Middle-East region, was perhaps a sensible thing to do. Jerusalem is not always a safe and recommended place to visit. Despite the recent Revolution in Egypt, the Cairo tourist spots such as the Great Pyramid and Sphinx are unaffected by these troubles. Although we were delighted to visit Jerusalem, we were not big fans of the tour we went on. We were prepared for the hard work, as we were picked up in Sharm El-Sheikh at 9pm and returned midnight the next day (meaning a bus trip through the night), but we were disappointed that there were hardly any opportunities for free time to explore the old city of Jerusalem.

Of course, excursions and tourist tours are not the ideal way to get great photographs, but our experience from previous tours in Greece was very good. They gave us various explanations at places we stopped, but at the same time gave us plenty of time to explore and take pictures. Now we did pack quite a lot into our day in the Middle-East (Jerusalem, Palestine, the Dead Sea) but it was still a bit annoying that any photos taken were pretty much standard ones everyone else could get. This should not take away from the fact though that visiting Jerusalem was a very special and fascinating experience, that if times are good, I thoroughly recommend.

The picture you see of Jerusalem here is taken from the Mount of Olives perspective, which gives a wonderful view over the old city of Jerusalem. I do not want to call this an HDR, if I could invent a term for it, I would call it a semi-HDR. This is because my original picture is a standard single RAW image, but I created an HDR out of this single RAW file, to bring out more colour and detail. The final picture is the original image, with the HDR elements masked into the main architectural and old city parts. The picture was completed by eliminating the many cranes and other distracting features in the background.

Quick note: This is my first picture from the continent of Asia. Having visited as well Egypt (in Africa) and Miami (in North America), I now have pictures posted in 2013 from 4 different continents (including Europe of course)! Despite my fairly low output so far (this is going to change rapidly), I'm very chuffed with that fact!