Anytime one tries to get a nice reflection on any water in a middle of a city, going there early in the morning is always the best. It’s the only time when the water is nice and calm, with no ships running around. It was exactly the same in Dubai. The Dubai marina canal is not that heavily frequented by ships, but still enough to destroy the reflections.

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

The lighting on this bridge is just crazy. Very strong neon light from the sides and even stronger white light under it. Just crazy. Of course the 6 exposures I took were not enough to get the whole dynamic range, especially so late at night (this was taken after around midnight :)). But by using a combination of different processing techniques I got the most of it.

This photo is a HDR from 4 exposures created in Oloneo Photoengine (haven’t used the brightest two, as they made the result too bright) and then blended with the original exposures in Photoshop.

How about another shot from the Dubai Marina. Still have a lot unprocessed one (not that I will edit all of them anyway :)). This one is from the only sunrise I managed to get up, and I don’t really think I missed much during all the others. There was just very little color everywhere. So even in the editing I didn’t add so much color into the photo. It would just look to fake to me. Somehow each time I finish an edit, I look at the photo, and decide if it looks the way I remembered the scene. If it doesn’t, I just know I will not like it, even if the result is decent :)

This is a manual blend from 4 exposures. Most of the work was to brighten the foreground, while still having no movement on the boat.

I spend one evening in Dubai on the beach by the Burj Al Arab. Somehow the sunset was quite nice, but the photos look horrible. Not sure why. That actually the reason I haven’t yet posted any photos from there. But of course, here is a fist one. It’s not the best photo I ever taken, but not that bad either :)

This is a manual blend from 4 exposures, done in Photoshop.

Not that I really like going to the beach, but as I was staying close to it in the Dubai Marina, I went there for a moment. And it was hot as hell, so exactly like I thought. And as you can see from the photo, also not the best time for photography. So after taking few photos, I returned to doing what I do mostly during the day when traveling. Sleeping. That’s actually quite normal for me. I go out for the sunrise, then go to bed and then go out again in the evening to take more photos. Especially in such hot places as Dubai, I just don’t have the will to go out during the day.

This is a single photo, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop. I used a polarizing filter when taking this photo, but it didn’t help that much.