Before I went to Dubai, I had few questions about them, especially about tripod use, so I hope that this list will still help some of you, who plan to go there. So expect no surprising spots here :). Will need few more visits to get to those.

I will stick to places that are freely accessible in this list. You can also see all my photos from Dubai here.

Don’t forget to check out other available lists:

As I revisited Dubai recently, there will be few updates and new spots here, as some of the original ones are no longer accessible, or even existing.

At the top / Burj Khalifa

Of course, I have to include this one. It’s so unique to be able to be so high up. The view is just great. But there are few things one has to prepare for.

First of all, buy your ticket at least two weeks before online. Without it you either won’t get up at all, or you will have to pay for the much pricier ticket on the spot. They also sell only specific number of tickets for a certain time, so they can get sold out very quickly. I would suggest doing a sunrise instead of sunset. You get up much quicker, and it’s cheaper. The number of people is smaller, but they will stay around more, so grab a window, and wait for the sun by it.

Secondly, be prepared for an airport-style security check. They have no problems with camera gear or tripods, but they suggest you don’t take a big bag with you. I had a camera, 5 lenses, and a tripod with me, and they only wanted to look inside the bag. There were no issues.

Thirdly, get a Lenskirt or something to cover your camera. The slits in the wall, that were available before, are still there, but not there is a metal railing in the middle of them. None of my lenses would fit through. The only solution was to take photos through the glass. Also, the flooring is not the best there, and every time someone walks by, your tripod will shake. So get ready for that.

View this location in Google maps. GPS 25.197368, 55.274216

Dubai Marina

Of course, the second place has to be the Dubai marina. If one likes photos of skyscrapers, it a must. It’s the best late at night and early in the morning, where you meet almost no one there. The security guards here are really annoying, and they will stop you randomly around the marina. You can see them riding around with small golf carts. They will not bother you on the bridges in the area or if you use a clamp (strangely).

Also get yourself an ND filter. The daytime photos looks so much better from there as long exposures.

View this location in Google maps. GPS 25.079790, 55.140932

Palm Jumeirah

They should have something like this in every city. A great place to get a nice photo of the cityscape. From one side you get a great view of Dubai Marina, from the other of the Burj Al Arab. Just take a longer lens with you, as it’s a little further away. There is also a new walkway around the perimeter of the marina, so while you can’t get easily to the rocks anymore, you get a nice stable platform to shot from, quite close to the water.

View this location in Google maps. GPS 25.097297, 55.129049

Business bay

The original spot I shared here is still accessible, but not longer worth it. The new constructed building now block the view of the Burj Khalifa, so it does not looks so nice. But the whole business bay changed a lot in the last years, and you can get some great skyline views in the area anyway.

View this location in Google maps. GPS 25.190703, 55.289121

Jumeira Public beach

The original spot I shared here does not even exist anymore. The progress in Dubai is just so fast. Instead, I would suggest a different spot (the name of the beach is the same, as it’s all called the same :)), one next to the Burj Al Arab. You can get a really nice sunset here.

View this location in Google maps. GPS 25.147297, 55.193299

Under Burj Khalifa

You will need a wider lens to get a nice shot here, as the tower is just so high, but it’s worth it. If you go too close to the tower, be ready for security guards. I was stopped even a bit further (close to the opera) but there I was only informed that video is not permitted, but no problem with photos. Who knows why. I don’t.

Btw. if you see those dandelions still there, check out the authors, Mirek Struzik, website here: https://struzik-art.com/en.

View this location in Google maps. GPS 25.195567, 55.274451

There of course are many, many, many more spots, and I hope I revisit Dubai as soon as possible, to get many more shots.

Other available lists:

For today’s process post, let’s look at one of my photos taken in Edinburgh, Scotland. I actually wanted to take a photo of this beautiful hotel in the middle of the city, but as I set up my camera, a buss stopped right in front of me. So I quickly recomposed, to make the bus the main subject of the photo.

It was actually quite funny, how the people in the bus noticed me taking the photo, and nicely smiled for it :)

So to get this final image

I started with 5 exposures, with the 0EV looking like this.

It looked quite OK from the start, but few tweaks were still necessary. I imported them all into Lightroom and corrected only the chromatic aberrations and lens distortion’s there.

As you can see, the 5th exposure was not usable at all, so I haven’t even loaded it into Photoshop. So after loading the other 4 exposures into Photoshop, I did the following (layers numbered from bottom up)

1. 0EV exposure
2. darkened the brightest parts from the -1EV shots (you can see the mask here, I used a luminance mask to create the selection and then brushed over it)

3. there were still few bright areas, so I repeated the process with the -2EV exposure
4. brightened few spots from the +1EV exposure
5. used the -1EV once more, as I wanted to use the people in the bus from that exposure. The mask is manually painted.
6. added more contrast to the darkest areas of the photo
7. added a little contrast to the midtones
8. brightened a little the shadow darks (all these masks were created using TK actions)
9. merged the layers into a new one, and retouched out few spots
10. desaturated the blue channel, as the sky was too blue
11. added more structure using the high pass sharpening method
12. added a little more overall contrast.

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here:

I haven’t shared any discount for my video tutorial series on the blog yet, so how about one. For the next two days (until midnight on Sunday CET) you can use the discount code “WEEKENDSALE” to get a 30% off the price of Master exposure blending video series. That’s around 15usd off from the normal 49usd price (So the new price is 34,30 usd).

To get all the info, and sample videos on the series, please check the Master exposure blending page.

and hear you can see the introduction video, to see what it’s about

Let’s look at another photo, and how I put it together. For today’s photo I used 56 different exposures, that were all combined in a different way. This was my first experiment with shooting star trails in the middle of the city, and I was quite happy with the result. So let’s go :)

For this result

I started with 48 exposures for the stars.

Each one looking like this (you can’t really see the stars, but that’s normal :))

I edited them all in Lightroom, to remove lens distortion, chromatic aberrations and vignetting. I then exported all into layers in photos. The exported images all looked like this one:

I can’t show you the Photoshop file for the stars, as I forgot to save it, but what I did was to change all except the first layer to the blend mode lighten. I also played with contrast and levels, to make the stars more visible. In the end I ended with this result.

With this the first part of the photo was finished, not for the bridge part. I took additional 8 images as a HDR series.

I applied the same corrections to them in Lightroom as with the star shots, to make the blend easier. I then exported them all as 16-bit Tiff files and loaded into Oloneo Photoengine. There I changed the strength and contrast to get this result:

From here I continued into Photoshop. I loaded the HDR and the stars images into layers, and blended them together by using a selection of the sky and manually painting few areas. I then also applied Color effex detail extractor onto the image, to get more detail on the bridge and make the stars even more visible. I ended by applying more contrast and making the stars more whiter by using levels.

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here:

There are many things one can do to improve ones photography skills. One can read books, watch tutorials, get new equipment and much more. But the thing that helps the most, is taking and editing photos. The much the better. The more you do something, the better you get.

Now the question is, how to get oneself to shoot and edit as much as possible, when it isn’t ones main job. A lot of people try so called 365 projects, also called a photo a day project. The goal there is to take a photo every day. But I thing, having a daily blog is a more crazier version of this.

This blog passed it’s 4th year of existence some time ago, and it hasn’t been always easy to keep up with it. As every photographer knows, there are days when one really is not in the mood to touch the camera, or when every result just looks ugly. Of course there are also days when one is busy, one is traveling and there is absolutely not time.

It actually happened a lot of times, that I just arrived late at night home from a trip, and first thing was to copy the photos to the PC and edit one, so I can update the blog :)

To every photographer, I would suggest to try it out for a while. Not many can stick with it, as it just takes too much time and commitment. I have thought many times to switching to a less regular posting, but as I’m a very stubborn person, I never did it :)

But do I think that it’s crazy to do a daily photo blog? Yes I do. It helps one get better, helps one to try to do more with photography. But it also makes one more nervous. Once you get used to a daily post, and one is late, it aggravating. Or when one had no time to shoot for a while, or no good photo opportunities, and one want something new for the blog.

As everything, it’s usually goes up and down. It’s great after a trip, when one has a huge amount of new photos, and it’s horrible after a month without a new one :)

It’s also a great pleasure to look through ones old posts, and see how the skill evolved (of course when one gets over how horrible the old photos are :)). I started posting to Flickr right when I started with photography, and to the blog soon after that, so I have a history of all my photos.

I seen photographers who started with blogging and ended quite quickly, because the haven’t seen the response/ visits/ comments/ fame there were hoping for. But in all cases, one has to do this for oneself. Actually blogging is the only platform, where you can do what you want. On social networks it is easier to get followers and views, but there one is always at the mercy of Google/ Facebook/ whoever, who can change anything from day to day. On ones own blog, one is the own master. Also blog posts don’t get lost in time so easily :)

So if you are a photographer, I really suggest you start a blog. I just would not do a daily one :)