Night time Street photography in Bur Dubai

Bernard, Vikas, Sally, Jonathan and I met up for a bit of night photography in one of the old markets in Bur Dubai. Surprisingly the weather was quite tolerable. Once the sun went down, it cooled down to 33 degrees (centigrade) and the wind help to cool us down even further. The market was full of barbershops, material shops, tailors, butchers, cobblers, supermarkets, mom and pop stores selling a wide variety of wares. It was surprisingly bright due the large number of florescent lighting in and around all the store fronts. We walked around for about 2 hours including a 20 min pit stop at a local juice bar. It was quite a lot of fun and we are hoping to repeat the experience. In terms of the images shot, we experimented with a variety of camera and lens and shooting modes. Jonathan was shooting with a Leica / 50 mm f2.5, Sally had a nikon and Vikas was shooting with a Mark3D. Bernard and I were shooting with the Fuji XT. As usual, he had the 55-200 lens while I was shooting with the kit lens ( I did carry my 55 m along but didn't get the chance to try it out). It was interesting to compare our approaches. He shot in very close while I shot wide so we had different perspectives of the same scene. For example, when I shot this image, he shot this one.

There was a lot of contrast created due to the bright lights and the dark backgrounds. I decided that in processing the images I would try and simulate the Kodak T400 black and White film adjusted for a bit of less grain than what one would have found on if shooting with the actual film. It's a bit more of a dramatic high contrast look and not something that I have tried before. I am still of two minds on whether I like the digital processing or not. There was a lot of storefront and reflections that had to be incorporated in the images. In some case, they added to the drama and in some cases they really were a pain to deal with. There are quite a few shooting and processing challenges that need to be mastered in night street photography.

I am definitely going to go back and shoot more street in Bur Dubai at night.

Abandoned

On a trip to one of the Northern emirates, Ras ul Khaimah, I came across an abandoned aircraft, some relict of bygone days. Even though it was a typically bright and sunny day, at about 3 pm in the afternoon, there was still some blue in the sky, maybe not as much as I would have liked but at least it was that bright washed out white hazy sky that we often have to contend with in the UAE. I decided that given the light and the dynamic range, HDR was probably the best way to go. I took 3 shots1 EV apart for each image and then processed them using HDR efex pro. I did also do a few post processing work with photoshop as well as promatix but in the end preferred the results that came out of HDR efex pro.

The Grand Mosque in Monochrome

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.