Living in the United Arab Emirates, I had the opportunity to visit the Shaikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi one morning and I decided that this beautiful monument would be a fitting subject for one of my OCA photography assignments. I chose the mosque because first, I was absolutely captivated by the sheer scale and beauty of this landmark building. It has been estimated that 20,000 people can gather to pray in this mosque. There are many noteworthy elements in the design of the Mosque. I love the beautiful shape and form of the many domes and minarets, the beautiful calligraphy and mosaic work done on the walls (exterior and interior), the long corridors, the gold leaf work on the pillars, the beautiful crystal chandeliers to just name a few I used my fujix100 to shoot these images so all of the images were shot with 23 mm (35 mm equivalent in full frame). In an ideal situation, I would have loved to be able to go back to the Mosque but it's about 2 hours away from where I live and I just couldn't find time to go back repeatedly. I think that to really bring out the best in shooting these type of projects one really should have the opportunity to go back to the site to re-shoot images after some period of evaluation and contemplation but often this is not possible. I do plan to keep adding to my collection of this Mosque by going back there (but it was just not possible in the time frame I had set myself to finish the assignment).
I was also hoping to shoot the images on a cloudy day so that I could also capture some texture in the sky. Unfortunately, on the day of the shooting, the sky was very clear, nary a cloud in sight.
