Dubai Marina in 2018 vs. 2014

As I said yesterday, Dubai and Dubai marina change a lot. And today’s photo will shot this change. I took a very similar panorama from the Palm Jumeirah, as I did 4 years ago, when I was in Dubai. This is a huge panorama. To be clear, the reflection is fake, created in Photoshop. You can’t get a clear reflection in a sea, it just moves to much.

You can nicely see how the spaces between the skyscrapers fill up with other skyscrapers and the new wheel is just crazy bit :) Actually you can also see how my editing style change in the last 4 years here. This new photo is a 4 exposure panorama stitched in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop.

You can see a bigger version of the 2018 photo here and the 2014 photo here (please right click the links a choose open in a new tab to see the photo full size). You can also see a zoomable version of the 2014 one here.

And here are few details:

And here is the image I took in 2014:

Looking down in the JLT

I don’t usually carry the fish eye lens with me. It’s great when I need to do a 360 degree photo, but not for much else. But since I had it with me the evening I was in the JLT area in Dubai. So of course I took few photos with it :)

This is a two shot blend done in Photoshop.

Palm Jumeirah at night

Today’t photo includes the whole Palm Jumeirah. I wanted it whole, but I did not plan for it to be this wide, but it’s to late to retake it :). So I’m stuck with this view.

Palm Jumeirah is a huge structure, so it’s quite hard to get it all, and still get a nice detail. So for this one, I did a 5 shot panorama, each shot from 3 exposures. The result is so big, that Photoshop refused to save it as a JPG at full size :) I ended up with a 5.5GB PSB file and a final resolution of 130Mpix (25500×5000 pixels)

But this also makes it hard to display it properly here. So since the standard size is just too small, here you can see a much bigger resolution (please right click the link and choose open in new tab to see it full size) and I’m also including some detail shots here. Probably, later on I will make a zoomable panorama from it, as the ones that are available here.

And here are few details:

Island builders at night

There is so much construction in Dubai. You can see cranes everywhere you look. But they are not only building skyscrapers, they are also building more islands. And while I was taking photo from one of the skyscrapers in the Dubai marina, I noticed this ship. I’m not 100% sure what they were doing there, but it do looked like they were moving rocks from one area to other, so building new islands in the marina.

This is a blend from three exposures. Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Framed view of the Grand Mosque

I revisited the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, while in Dubai, and got quite a lot of photos. Now, with many more lenses available than I had before, I can also get quite different views there. Especially the tilt shift came in handy. But as the Grand Mosque was quite full of people the day I was there, I also took few more zoomed in shots. And here is one of the main entrance. This is quite a popular composition here, as you can really nicely frame the main tower of the Grand Mosque, with the arch of the entrance. You just have to step away a bit and zoom in your lens :)

This is a blend of two exposures, done in Photoshop.