April's low budget photowalk

The 30 days of April will not pass without a photowalk. Since funds were running low, Macko and I decided to walk all the way to Sharjah's Gold souks just to ease our photography craving. Since the sun was still too bright and we had night shots in mind, we decided to check out the souk.

In the Souk, we found a couple of stalls that got my attention because of what they were selling: camera accessories and lenses and a line of multitools and knives produced by the Leatherman Tool Group- my two addictions in one shop! I was thankfull I had no cash or else, it would have been harder to practice temperance to the limit.

Night has fallen when we started shooting. Light trails and ghost-like figures of people accented our frames. It was like a show-and-tell kind of shoot and whoever invented slow shutter speeds and sturdy Velbon sherpa tripods should have some credit for our output. With that said, I think our tripods deserve some trivia in this page. Macko uses a Velbon Sherpa 200R And I got a Velbon Sherpa 600R. Why Velbon? It is cheaper than the Monfrottos (yeah, right!) The name comes from the fact that in Japanese the r and l sound is actually the same. So the VEL in Velbon is partially from the Japanese pronunciation of VERy and the French word BON (which means good). These two words were combined as a new word and a new trademark: VELBON. It’s short for VERY GOOD! (taken from their Official site)

We walked to get different angles and subjects.

On the east side of the Souk stands a trio of pencil-like towers. I remember shooting a wedding in one of the fine-dining restaurants here last December.

It was getting late and we thought it was time to separate ways. I then decided to walk home along the Corniche to take more shots.

It was 11 pm when I got home. time to call it a night. Going over this month's only photowalk expense: a can of ice-cold Dr. Pepper- aed 3.95. Not bad at all.

Monster Trucks & Flying Dirtbikes

Another photowalk- this time at Dubai Festival City, all just to feed curiousity that was rising as someone at work stumbled upon their site, http://www.monstertruckshowdubai.co.uk/.

Since the show lasted only an hour, we didn't mind getting standing tickets. All we wanted was to aim nikkors and fire away. A designated seat would certainly be a hinderance to capturing different angles of the stunts.

As the show started, dirtbikes, a buggy a quad and a "honkey tonkey" ferroza paraded along the make-shift arena. ( It was actually part of the parking lot) The commentator tried his best to make a lively show, but his way of entertaining just doesn't click with an audience who would rather have listened to an interpretation in their local language. He spent a considerable percentage of his time asking the audience to cheer rather than introducing the next stunt. My sympathy to the team doing stunts without any applause. (or maybe they failed to impress the audience?)

About three fourths of the show were dirtbike and big bike stunts. The dirtbike stunts were ok- jumping over cars and other stuff, while the big bike stunts were just something one can regularly see done by dare devils and adrenaline junkies on the highways of Dubai: smoking tires, doing wheelies. (what else?)

The feroza did a two-wheel stunt, and I wish I could say more.

As the final 10 minutes of the show came, the monster trucks were introduced. One broke down while doing a rambage over a pile of junk cars, and the other just did circles while the comentator was stressing the thousands of UK pounds spent on the car and the high fuel consumption (he must have forgotten he was in Dubai- a place where water is more expensive than gasoline) At last, that truck did its rampage over the junk, and that ended the show.

At the end of the show, I would only imagine the queen's voice, in its perfectly royal Brittish accent saying: "We are not amused...."

*** The stunts did a perfectly good job and a lot of skill and talent were seen. I am only expressing MY own point of view about the show. Having seen a number of similar stunts performed around the world, this show just did not meet my expectations. (or was it too hot to appreciate ther stunts? Blame it on the unforgiving arabian sun...)

Seven stars in my kit lens!

Well, I'm not trying to capture seven astronomical bodies with a humble 18-55mm nikkor. That would be hard to do. An easier way to capture seven stars would be a few minutes drive from home. The best part of it was diong it with friends from work who shared the same nikon addiction.

Burj al Arab. The only hotel on the planet to boast a 7- star rating was a sight to behold. Although we were not able to enter the premises because we didn't have time, (time is gold, if you know what I mean) we were allowed to shoot from the main gate. And shoot we did!

A short walk from the gate passing Wild Waddi adventure park and Jumiera beach hotel (another sight to behold) brought us to an open beach right next to the dubbed luxurious beach. Actually, they had the same sand and sea water. It's the fence that defined the boundary between the luxurious price of basking and swimming and the free-for-all beach.

We spent a goot 2 hours draining batteries and filling memory cards while exhausting creativity.

The sun's heat made us decide to go the the Mall of Emirates to cool down and from there, we parted ways. The photowalk was a success and we plan to do it again.

Babel

Babel. The Tower of Babel (Hebrew: מגדל בבל‎ Migdal Bavel Arabic: برج بابل‎ Burj Babil), was an enormous tower built at the city of Babylon (Hebrew: Babel, Akkadian: Babilu), a cosmopolitan city typified by a confusion of languages, also called the "beginning" of Nimrod's kingdom. According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, participated in the building. The people decided their city should have a tower so immense that it would have "its top in the heavens."

We all know what happened to ancient Babel. Those people had one intension of building such a structure:

"Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves..."

Fast forward around 4000 years later. On the same region of the ancient face of the earth has risen a simillar tower, built to top the records of modern engineering and architecture. Rising 828 meters into the arabian sky stands Burj Khalifa (formerly known as Burj Dubai) This icon in the heart of downtown Dubai has caused a spark of light for a city that sits on a shadow of scandalous econimic crisis.

Indeed, a "name for oureselves" has been established. In a city of superlatives where adjectives with "est" suffixes are a daily cliche among tour guides, the "tallest building" surely has found it's place on the list of places to visit.

The Burj is not hard to miss. Rising over three times higher than any building forming the cityscape, the Burj can be seen from great distances, even from Sharjah, Dubai's neighboring Emirate. At night, the tower's strobes rhythmically slice through the darkness to the desert sky, declaring its hights to aircraft pilots and silently commanding many flight passengers to scramble for their cameras to capture a glimpse of a celebrity among skyscrapers.

Sadly, this symbol of Dubai's bling is already scarred. It is a fact that this tower of vanity does not belong to Dubai (anymore). About a month before the tower opened its doors to the public, Dubai's economy was on a freefall. It's oil-rich neighbor, Abu Dhabi shelled out a whooping 10 billion dollars to cushion the blow. One of the trade offs was that this tower would be property of Abu Dhabi right smack on the heart of downtown Dubai.

Opening night was a blast. A multitude of mixed nationalities waited, anticipating the fireworks and fountain shows. Through the cacofony of various languages and fashion statements at the opening night, one can just imagine reverse of Babel. Babel was never completed and people fled from it. this time, on Burj Khalifa's completion, people of different languages came over to sing and unite in celebration of such an engineering feat.