Dubai Marina at night blue
Dubai Marina at night is a vibrant busy place full of restaurants and leisure venues. Beautifully laid out with miles of marina walks and walks along the sea f...
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Dubai Marina at night is a vibrant busy place full of restaurants and leisure venues. Beautifully laid out with miles of marina walks and walks along the sea front.
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Oct, 2016Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken from my hotel room balcony at Dubai Marina, UAE. I visited Dubai many times over a period of 8 years. This was one of my early trips when I was just learning to use my camera.Time
I took this photo about 8 pm at night. Dubai, being close to the equator, has day and night split almost equally. Great opportunities for night photography. Dubai Marina was still being developed at this time with new skyscrapers being built all the time.Night was the quietest time to capture nice images.Lighting
Although it was night time, there was a lot of artificial light from street lamps and buildings along the marina. I used this to create the 'star' effects throughout the image and to capture the lighting reflected in the water.I took the photograph several times with different exposures. This allowed me to play with the artificial light.Equipment
I shot this photo with a Canon 750D and a Tamron 70-300mm lens mounted on a tripod. Aperture 22/1?ISO 100?Shutter 41/1?Focal Length 18/1. I also used a remote trigger to reduce any camera shake.Inspiration
From where I was on the 7th floor of the hotel, overlooking Dubai Marina, I had a great view. At the time, October 2016, the Marina area was undergoing great development. It was being set up as an exclusive residential area with many restaurants and entertainment venues. I hadn't done much night photography at that time and saw this as an ideal opportunity to practice. The lighting was challenging but the subject area was still fantastic. Real estate was only partially occupied at that time so there were many light and dark patches. I also wanted to get the restaurant boats into the frame. One of the reasons I chose this scene was because I knew it wouldn't change much during my shoot. Everything was static even the light.Editing
I actually have several versions of this photograph. The photograph itself didn't need much post processing. This particular image I played with for quite a while over 2 days before I achieved what I wanted. I did the processing in Photoshop. The blue tint was achieved by reducing the temperature and I used the sharpening filter to produce more of a star effect from the lights along the water's edge.In my camera bag
Nowadays I carry my Canon 5D Mk III with 3 or 4 lenses depending on what I am shooting. My lenses are; Canon 70-300mm; Canon 50mm F1.8; Canon 24-105 mm for wider angle shots; Canon 200-400 mm for distance shots. I also have a Canon C-AF 2x Teleplus Pro 300 which doubles the focal length of the larger lenses. This is great when I'm shooting wildlife or birds from a distance. The teleconverter only works on focal length of more that 80mm which is worth remembering. I use a polarising filter often and have a range of filters for each lense.Most of my shoots are in daylight so each lense has its own lense hood. For low light shots I have a remote shutter release to reduce camera movement as much as possible. I have two tripods, a large one for added stability and a lighter travel tripod which is the one I use most of the time. I always carry a spare battery and lens cleaning kit. I love taking photos of the sea and this can cause havoc to a lens from seaspray. I often have to clean my lenses several times during a shoot. Finally, I carry spare lens covers because I always seem to lose at least one during a shoot.Feedback
Because everything in a scene such as this is static, it is fairly simple to capture. My advice would be to identify the best vantage point in advance. The Marina could get quite busy with walkers so the fact that I was 7 floors up when I took this photo helped a lot. I had no-one in the way. Check what is going on around the scene. Off at the left of my photo was a building site with large lights blazing away. They would have caused real lighting problems if I'd included that area. Take several shots of a scene like this at different exposures. That way you are sure of getting the image you are looking for. Sharpness is normally what people look for in this type of photo so keep your ISO setting as low as possible and use manual focusing rather than the AF setting on your camera.
