Shooting in such a strong midday sun is really not ideal, but since I was in Dubai, I had to take at least few daytime shots. This one if from the Dubai Marina yacht club, and I took it quite quickly as I was warned that in this area the security guards tend to stop people with tripods. But that time, nobody stopped me :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, bust most of the finished result is from a single exposure, edited in Lightroom. I also used a polarizing filter to get the blue sky.

Photoshop really scared me for a moment, when it crashed while I was editing this photo. It’s been perfectly stable for so long now (I still use CS6, as I feel the CC version is slower) and this was only the second crash I can remember. If you are curious, the first one was when I tried to edit a 200+ Mpix panorama :). But as it has been so stable for so long, I always forget to save files regularly. Luckily, Photoshop does, and after the recovery I only was missing a single curves layer.

But to the photo, this is taken at the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, right around the sunset. The sun was shining form the right, as is still visible on the pillars. That’s why I also left the colors a little warmer, to fit more with the light that was at that time. This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine and finished in Photoshop.

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 Grand Mosque is really beautiful from outside, and also from inside. It’s quite strange walking around without any shoes one, but the carpet insides is not just beautiful, but also very comfortable. I have to give them also big thumbs up for allowing tripods, even inside :) Something a lot of other places can learn from.

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop. I’m not completely sure about the colors here. As I was there late in the evening, there ware already light on outside, inside and also the decorative neon lights. This mix of different light, cold and warm at the same time, is really not so great when on tries to capture what one saw. At least the details look great :)

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.