Sunrise at the top

I’m trying a bit to relax these few days, as I’m still quite tired from running around for a whole week. And the 30 degree temperature difference between Dubai and Bratislava is also not so easy to get used to. I don’t want to get sick, as another trip is not far away.

But I did already edited quite a few photos, so the updates here will keep on coming :) For today, here is sunrise shot, taken from the 124th floor of the Burj Khalifa, the At the top visit. Regrettably, the slits in the walls there, are no longer big enough to get the lens through. But I was prepared, and had the Lenskirt with me. With it, I managed to get a nice, reflection free photo through the glass wall. Had to only remove the few glass scratches that were still visible :)

Btw. I you plan a visit, they still allow tripods there, and even my, bigger camera bag was not a problem. Also, the sunrise visit has much fewer people than sunset, they just stay there longer.

This is a two shot blend, one shot for the city, second one for the sunrise.

Palms under the Burj Khalifa

I used the Laowa 12mm F2.8 Zero-D lens quite a lot in Dubai. With a city with so many huge buildings you can always use a ultra wide angle lens, and the wider the better. Same here, right under the Burj Khalifa. I really like the palms at the sidewalk, but I wanted also to have the whole Burj Khalifa in the shot. I wanted to get a nice framing, and also to keep the feeling on how massive the tower is. That’s why I like the perspective distortion here.

It was quite windy the evening I took this, and you may see that on the leafs of the palms. I did do a second shot at a high ISO, planing to mask it in and get rid of the blur. But as it was already quite late in the evening, I had to use ISO over 6400 to stop the movement at all, the results were quite noisy to be useful. So I left it as it was. But somehow it works fine in this shot :)

This is a two exposure blend. The second exposure was only used to darken few highlights in the shot. Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Clouds over Dubai – plotagraph

I’s slowly packing for my trip next week to Dubai. And while doing so, I thought I also share a Dubai photo with you. But as I not yet have any new ones, here is an older one, just animated with Plotagraph Pro.

You can check out my Plotagraph Pro review here, and a guide how to create them here.

(if you use an older web browser, you may only see a static image, if you are on a mobile, please hit the play button to see the Plotagraph in motion)

Night at the Marina – Plotagraph

How about another Plotagraph. I’m still sticking to more realistic animations in my plotagraphs, but looking through others works, people are more inclined to use it for more artistic animations. Maybe I try those sometime, but not yet. I really like it like this more :)

You can check out my Plotagraph Pro review here, and a guide how to create them here.

(if you use an older web browser, you may only see a static image, if you are on a mobile, please hit the play button to see the Plotagraph in motion)

Endless traffic in Dubain – Plotagraph

I knew I want to animate this photo from the first moment I tried Plotagraph. I just wanted to make it more like what I seen. There was just endless traffic how far you could see. So I tried to edit it before, but I did not like the result. So it was standing there in the library for a few months now, and only yesterday, I finished it. I think it was also due to the updated Plotagraph had this year, that I was able to get it to a point I liked it.

So what I did here? I masked out the traffic on all a lanes, than stabilized the middle part, so that does not move, and then animated the traffic. And to make it even more better, I masked out some of the reflection in the skyscrapers, and animated those too :) Now all it misses is the sound of the traffic, but you can imagine that yourself :)

(if you are on a mobile or use an older web browser, you may only see a static image)