One of my most favorite views of Dubai. I was quite lucky to get to this spot, even if we only had a hour to take shots. But as I knew exactly what photo I wanted, I focused mostly on taking it. I haven’t used my regular tripod here, but the Manfrotto tabletop one instead. The small wall around the roof area of the building was just too high for me to get over it with my tripod. Actually that was a recurring problem I had during my whole trip. I just need a higher tripod. It’s the first thing on my list of needed upgrades :)

This photo is a vertorama, created from 2 shots, each one from 5 exposures. First the exposures were combined into a vertorama in PTgui and then into HDR in Oloneo Photoengine. It was finished in Photoshop after that.

I really don’t use filters that much. When one shoots hdr, using a filter is not so important usually. But for me, there are two exceptions. Either when I wan to have a longer exposure, when I use a ND filter, or when I shoot during a very sunny day, when I use the polarizer, to darken the sky. Of course one has to take into account where the sun is. For those who are not familiar with this, a polarizing filter works best when the sun is to the side form you. It does not work well when the sun is in front or behind you. Same for this photo, where the sun was to the left of me, at the almost perfect position. And the polarizer gave me a great result :)

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

A little different shot from the Burj Khalifa I tried a similar shot before in Bratislava and Ljubljana, but looks more stunning with few skyscrapers in the view. This is actually quite interesting way to have railings on high buildings. You have a glass wall, so it’s safe, but you also have openings in it, that you can take photos. I had to wait for a while to be able to take this photo, as I could not get a big enough space free of any people, but after a while I succeed.

This was taken as two bracketed series of 4 images, one focused on the borders, one on the skyscrapers. Combined into two HDRs in Oloneo Photoengine and blended in Photoshop.

The spiral one on the right is the Cayan Towr (also known as the Infinity tower). It looks really cool, just makes it harder to correct perspective in a photo. And I had to do a lot of that in this one. I was actually surprised how thin the tower was. You know, in Europe, most buildings are huge, but low. In Dubai, it’s the opposite. The buildings are tall, but very slim.

This is a HDR from 4 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine and finished in Photoshop.

So many neon lights in the marina. Not sure how other cameras deal with them, but mine always creates some crazy colors from them. But it also can look quite interesting. That actually quite a theme in Dubai, where a lot of buildings are lighten up by this very strong neon lights. Getting a right color in a photo of them can be really quite difficult.

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