The tallest reflection

So many people take photos of the Burj Khalifa. And with that, it really is not easy to get a unique photo here. But of course I tried. And one I have not seen before (not that I seen all photos of Burj Khalifa :)), is one with the full reflection of the tower in the nearby pool. So I tried to get one.

It’s not really that easy though. The tower on it’s own is already huge, so just getting it into the shot you need a really wide lens. For this photo I needed even more, so I had to go with a vertorama. To avoid some crazy distortions, I went with the 17mm tilt-shit lens, in vertical orientation. Like this I could shift it up and down, instead the usual left to right. Like this, I could fit the whole Burj Khalifa with it’s reflection into only two shots. I still needed to do some perspective correction, but not too much.

This is a two shot vertorama, combined in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop. For my recomended spots to take photos in Dubai, check out the Top Photography Spots in Dubai list.

Dubai Marina in blue

Let’s go back to Dubai Marina in today’s daily photo. This one is from one of my favorite spots there, from the Palm Jumeirah. I of course had to use a longer lens to zoom in, as the city is not that close as it seems.

I also used the NISI natural night filter here. It made for some really nice colors in the city. If you are curious about it, check out this first impressions post about it.

This is a single exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

The huge sun at the horizon

And today’s photo shows what I mean. It’s a sunrise shot, with the sun in it, and still I used only one exposure. You can check out the original shot on the side here and yes, it is very dark.

There are multiple reasons to do it this was. First, I was taking this shot handheld. I would prefer to not, but if you ever been on the Burj Khalifa observatory, you would have seen that the slits in the windows are very slim. And since I used the 12mm lens, I could not get close enough to the glass with the tripod. So having the shot dark, makes it much easier to handhold it, as I used a shorter exposure here.

Secondly, you can recover much more from shadows than from highlights in RAW files. So keeping a shot like this darker makes it easier to post-process.

But as you can see, I could recover the detail from the shadows and I did not need a second exposure here. But, if I had one, I would use it, as that would result in a bit cleaner image.

Dinner under the Burj Khalifa

Not easy to fit the Burj Khalifa into a photo, especially if you also want to include a foreground with it. But here is where the tilt shift lens works so great. With using a vertorama, you can get just so much more into your shot.

This is a three shot vertorama, combined in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop.

Purple dandelions under the Burj Khalifa

I quite like this light installations around Dubai. They make for some great foreground elements for photos. And since these dandelions change the color every few seconds, you can also get quite different photos quickly one after each other :)

These dandelions are right under the Burj Khalifa (as it’s clearly visible here :)) and I used the Laowa 12mm lens to get as much of them in the shot as I could.