Time really feels totally warped here and that is probably because I'm averaging 3 hours sleep a night and I'm running on fumes. The jet lag is real but the passion for discovering a new city coupled with photography helps me endure it. I had to wake up a 4:30 a.m. this morning for our sunrise shoot with Elia Locardi but that was no problem since I was up at 3:30 a.m.! Ian and I took a taxi to the Four Points Sheraton where Gulf Photo Plus arranged for our shoot to be at an outdoor terrace on the 43rd floor.
We had a view of several prominent buildings along with the main highway called Sheikh Zayed running through it. The shoot was challenging because the railing was very tall and at one point I had to stand on a table to operate my camera. It was dark when we arrived, the Blue Hour came and then the sun rose and it went by with the blink of an eye. This was one of my favorite shots from this morning. The other challenge for this shoot was the building pictured in the far left of the frame, called the Al Attar Tower is incredibly tall and the only way to get it into the image from this vantage was to shoot as portrait orientation.
After the sun rose, Ian and I had some fun playing with our iPhone cameras. I'm not sure if people realize just how much I shoot with my phone too. It has a ton of great features like the portrait feature on the 7 plus and apparently it makes people make goofy faces too...
Ian showing off the Portrait mode in the iPhone 7 Plus
After the sunrise, we had time to kill until 3:30 p.m. when we convened for the sunset shoot. The Mall of the Emirates is nearby so we went there for lunch. Everyone knows what a mall is so I won't go into much detail. But imagine the the most expensive store that you can't afford and then picture hundreds of them lined up one after another and that is pretty much the Mall of Emirates.
Our next shoot was on the roof of a residence tower on the 34th floor. It had almost a 360 degree view so we got some really interesting shots of the Dubai Marina area. I left my camera in the same spot so that I could experience the changing light from bright sun, to sunset to the Blue Hour. I guess clouds are relatively rare in Dubai, usually you just see a haze in the sky with little definition. I think we got lucky as we had some clouds and the suns rays were bouncing off them at the sunset.
Sunset near the Dubai Marina
Little Lego Kimmie T. wanted to get in on the action so she started to shoot too. And she heard some laughter behind her and when she turned around, she discovered a new friend named Little Lego Hamda from Switzerland who is here in Dubai for photography too. What a small Little Lego world...
Little Lego Kimmie T and Little Lego Hamda