Travelling Light – Photographing Light
As I mentioned in a previous post I had for some time wanted to visit Sri Lanka the combination of world class birding coupled with some iconic mammals makes this small Indian Ocean island a potentially excellent destination for a wildlife photographer furthermore the presence of a number of UNESCO world heritage sites coupled with the colonial history makes Sri Lanka a good all round destination.
Safari is a Swahili word that means journey. In the “bad old days” a Safari was all about big game hunting, fortunately to a large extent those days are past and now Safari has come to mean a vehilcle based wildlife watching/photography trip and whilst the concept of a Safari orginates in Africa, Safaris can now been indertaken in many parts of the world often in search of specfic species, for example Tiger Safaris have become huge business in India.
The Marina makes a good photographic location during the day – but makes a great location at night and probably the best location in Dubai – think lights, reflections and light trails.
and for those who prefer there architecturals lines straight here are a few shots from the Marina taken with the PanaLeica 8-18mm and fairly extensive use of the transform tool in Lightroom to correct for those converging verticals – the key with this type of shot is to shoot much wider than the intended final image in the knowledge that the transform tool will straighten the verticals but will also narrow in on the image quite significantly.
I am always on the lookout for somewhre to use my Fishy Fun Samyang 8mm fisheye lens, its fun to use and you never quite know what your are going to get.
Fisheyes like bold structures, foreground details and blue skies so the Marina development in southern Dubai looked like an ideal location to give it a spin.
Well not quite the top, in fact to be honest no where near the top, but about 2/3rds of the way up the Burj Khalifa – that said plenty high enough.
There is more to Dubai than just glass, steel and concrete. A glimpse of old Dubai and its people can still be seen along and around the Creek where wooden Dhows still ply their trade around the Gulf and Arabian ports. The gritty subjects make ideal candidates for some black & white photography where contrast and texture are key.
Whilst the Burj Khalifa makes a good subject during the day, at night it comes into its own as indeed does the Olympus OM-D EM1 mkII image stabilisation – all images here are handheld.
En route to Sri Lanka with Emirates we had the opportunity to have a few days in Dubai, as a part of the world we had not been to before we were keen to have a look and particularly interested to see the Burj Khalifa the worlds tallest (by some way) building.
For many years I had wanted to visit Sri Lanka – the alluring prospect of a mixture of birds and mammals (Elephants, Leopard & Sloth Bear) make this small island nation off the southeast coast of India a potentially ideal destination for a wildlife photographer and so during February off to Sri Lanka we went.
A Good Place to Stand 