Dubai has never been a city to make a quiet entrance.
It arrives, lit from all angles, reflected in polished marble, wrapped in glass and steel, surrounded by traffic trails and usually accompanied by something illuminated and taller than everything else around.
Which, for a cityscape photographer, is both extremely useful and rather exhausting – everywhere we look, there’s always something bigger and brighter to capture.
This trip was built around a series of Capture One livestreams from Dubai that David Grover and I would host.
The plan was simple enough:
- Shoot Dubai from a mix of rooftops, balconies, apartments, bridges, desert locations and maybe Abu Dhabi as a bonus.
- Record and broadcast the process end-to-end – live shooting, live editing, real-time.
- Show the raw files, the good – the bad – the ugly.
- Talk through the edit, along with the decisions we made along the way.
- And ultimately, bring people along for the part they rarely see: the waiting, the scouting, the missed shots, the gear balancing on hotel furniture, the laptop glowing in a dark room while everyone hopes the connection holds.
Naturally, of course, those simple plans are what travel photography tends to eat for breakfast and spit back at us in the field…
Dubai Marina
Our first proper angle came on the day David and I landed, from high above Dubai Marina thanks to some assistance from a great local fixer (yes, that’s David chumping-out with his thumbs…). This was an apartment with the sort of view that multiplies your rent, but had been empty for quite some time.
From up there, the Marina stops pretending to be a neighbourhood and reveals itself as a very well-lit machine with boats.
It’s Dubai doing what Dubai does best: building something that looks impossible, then lighting it like a West End finale. While most people instinctively head Downtown, the Marina has become my base of choice whenever I’m back in the city.
At golden hour, it still felt impressively architectural in nature.
The towers had shape and contrast, the waterway still held its deep green/blue colour and the last of the sun caught the glass in that brief window before everything became artificial.
That’s always the balancing act in Dubai when it comes to these sort of images – shoot too early and you get a lot of impressive buildings that blend into each other as a steel and grey cluster against a flat sky.
Wait too long, however, and the whole scene can flatten into black sky and bright signage with a level of contrast that even the 18-stop Dual Exposure on my Phase One will struggle to do anything with. The sweet spot sits between the two, but I’d always shoot before (and way after) that point, juuuust in case.
The behind-the-scenes view was somewhat less elegant – but made for a decent timelapse of those stages of light:
A balcony, two tripods, three cameras, and the two of us constantly getting in each other’s way – it’s the part we never normally show, but this was about streaming and showing the reality of shooting from here, not polished (fake) perfection.
By blue hour, the Marina skyline had come alive – almost like someone had just flicked a switch.
Boat trails finally started doing something useful and the contrast against the water deepened. The city gained that cool electric feel that makes Dubai Marina so special after dark, while still keeping enough colour in the sky to hold everything together.
This is also where editing can make or break an image – Dubai gives you bucket-loads of colour and contrast (unless you hit a sandstorm of haze) – add too much more in processing and the view starts looking eerily close to the inside of the sticky Weymouth nightclub I used to go to in my teens…
What we’d missed, standing outside for all that time, was the transformation of the living room view we saw when we first got there. On our way back in, I guess another multiplier hit the rental price in my head – imagine that as your window on the world.
Dubai from a high floor is oddly quiet. The city below is moving, flashing and performing, while inside there’s just the hum of air conditioning and every now and then a frustrated chorus of beeping car horns if the person at the front failed to move 0.01s after the light went green.
(Oh, and the sound of Mr Grover trying to find the camera parts he’d lost in an apartment with no electricity…)
The next day, and our first livestream from InterContinental Dubai Marina brought the production side into the frame – we picked up Annabelle from the airport and prepped the residence for show.
Laptop. Capture One. Tethered camera. Screens. Audio. Balcony. Rooftop. David, Annabelle, cables, lights, and the reassuring knowledge that any one small technical failure would immediately become the main story.
But, this is why we like doing these things live.
A polished tutorial can make photography look as though every decision was obvious. Live shooting removes that comfort. You see the adjustment, the waiting, the near miss, the exposure that we got wrong, the composition that needs another go, the boat that enters the frame beautifully and then ruins it by parking somewhere stupid. (Yes, I said “parking”…)
But the live view from these balconies is reliable – it’s perfect.
As we started this first broadcast, the city behind us (and therefore shots that came through) came to life.
That, for me, is the point of tethered shooting in a place like this. Tiny changes make a big difference to the “energy” of the shot we capture, and over a period of an hour the whole scene changed completely. From frame to frame, however, you only see those small individual changes properly when you slow down and look at the file on a big screen.
That’s where a lot of Dubai images fall down. The city starts showing off, everyone starts reacting, and the best frame gets missed while someone is still admiring the previous one on the back of the camera.
The finished Marina night frame worked because the movement in the foreground gave the buildings a pulse.
Without the boat trail, it’s a skyline. A good skyline, granted, but still a skyline. With the movement through the bottom of the frame, the city starts to feel alive.
That’s one of the simplest ways to make cityscape images stronger: find the motion.
Water, roads, boats, metro lines, fountains, crowds. Static buildings need something to tell the viewer the place is breathing, and capturing them as a long exposure shows that movement.
Looking down gave us a more graphic version of Dubai.
Less postcard, more “circuit board” – I’ve shot this “straight down” view a few times previously (and yes, it’s an uncomfortable moment for a camera on an extended tripod arm).
Perspective distortion, traffic trails, water, reflections and city lights – all stacked from a height that some people (cough) find concerning.
Frame averaging helped clean up the water and control the chaos, but the bigger decision was timing. Long exposures in cities can become messy very quickly and in a place with never-ending start-stop traffic jams, there’s always a compromise to find.
Construction Blues
Of course, not every high view behaves itself – especially in a city that’s under constant construction.
A location that was a sure bet six months ago can return the favour by growing another tower directly in front of itself. We’d checked the line of sight to Burj Khalifa in advance, but maps and memory don’t show you the full joy of yellow mesh, cranes and construction nets until you’re standing there, tripod in hand, already annoyed.
And in this case, while a 50th-floor balcony I’ve shot from before sounds like a safe bet, the reality was our view had been interrupted by a half-built tower wrapped in yellow mesh. (Oooh – with extending nets right at our level, just to really screw things up right when we needed to shoot!)
So earlier had been a useful scouting lesson, but until you get to the exact spot, you can never be 100% sure.
Still – while I’d previously shot this location ultra-wide, the (now forced) narrower field of view of my 32mm Rodenstock gave me a different perspective on this place while avoiding the block of construction to the right.
With no broadcast tonight, we shot a test sequence from sunset to blue hour and beyond.
With Burj Khalifa centre stage, Downtown Dubai wrapped around in its glow of lights as the sun set out of frame. It’s the obvious Dubai angle, which means it has to be handled carefully.
The tower dominates everything, of course. It’s still the tallest building in the world, and always seems to make a point of that in every photo you see.
The trick, however, is making the rest of Downtown earn its place in the frame. Balancing the cropped buildings left and right, we can then focus on the sweep of lights from the ring-road, followed by the lead up to the tower which at this time was being prepped for National Day celebrations.
In my view, while the Burj can be the lead character, it can’t be the only thing happening in the shot.
With blue hour came the illuminated fountains. (While they run in the daytime, they’re a little lost out there among the buildings – whereas the night lights put them on full display).
This is the moment Dubai cityscape photographers (and lighting designers) generally live for, but in my view it’s actually the less interesting of the two shots we caught that night. Maybe I’m just getting bored of darkness…
But, there’s a reason I keep going back to these timings when we shoot here. People think the camera settings make the photograph. They help, obviously. But the real setting is the clock.
At ground level, Downtown is a different kind of theatre.
We ventured out for a reliably local meal at Texas Roadhouse (following our adventures with Seth last year in Utah). “Fried stuff”, should be the mandatory description of most exported American eateries – and this was no exception…
But it was the fountain show up-close I was interested to capture – given I’ve only ever really been next to them when showing others round.
Tonight, however, was ready to deliver me a gift – a surprise.
For the crowd watching the fountain was almost better than the fountain show itself.
Hundreds of phones held up in the air, each screen recording the same scene, most of them also recording several other phones recording the same scene. Not one individual watching the show itself at the time.
And there’s a strangely perfect Dubai-ness to that.
A spectacular show, reflected through glass, water and a thousand tiny screens, all being saved forever and probably never watched again.
Naturally, I photographed the people photographing it – there are unwritten rules to these things.
On return to the balcony, our friend Uwe had news – Burj Khalifa was going to test lights and lasers tonight, ready for National Day.
“But when?” I asked. Turns out, that was the missing bit of info.
As the clock moved forward, we started losing people to bed. Those of us who were committed refused.
After way too long (when we should have been asleep for sure) – we got our reward. Ish…
Here’s the thing nobody puts in the brochure: a laser test is mostly waiting for a technician somewhere to move one beam six inches to the left.
While the light beams themselves impress – watching them adjust each one into place, slowly, was more painful than watching the paint dry in my new studio.
But – we were here – we weren’t NOT going to shoot it, so, click click click away we did.
I watched the “actual show” when it was performed – and it’s interesting, unless you had a center-line spot at the fountains or on the press balcony of The Address (the building to the right that looks at it), the laser show doesn’t really work in my view. Arguably, we got the full sequence that night (minus the images on the tower itself).
3am, time for bed…
…for a 6:15am alarm call.
“Luckily”, it wasn’t necessary, as it turns out our friendly construction neighbours get going from 5:30am each morning (how amazing!) – so sleep really didn’t happen.
Sunrise did, however.
Pre-dawn Downtown has a different feel – softer, quieter. The city is still lit, but it feels like it’s stopped trying to perform quite so hard as it does at night.
With Burj Khalifa reaching so high, it picks up the first rays of light well before the city below.
As the sun came up, the haze started to separate the buildings and the whole thing became more layered.
That’s the version of Dubai people often miss. Everyone wants the electric night shot, and I understand why. But morning gives shape back to the skyline. It shows the spaces between things and their scale, the dust in the air, the way the city sits within the desert rather than floating above it in LED form.
With light increasing to the point we’d lose that softness, I wanted to try a high-res panoramic stitch using the 138mm Rodenstock XT lens.
With so much going on, the temptation is to always try to include everything in a shot of Dubai when sometimes, maybe, the more interesting thing would be to tighten the frame.
There’s nothing dramatic about this frame, nothing clever – just a slice of that skyline without any extra distractions…
Oh, and of course, an insane amount of detail for a 300mp file when cropped to even just 50% of reality:
Breakfast after a sunrise shoot should feel like a reward.
And this time, it did. Big shout out to Caju for managing the impossible feat of Dubai – by cooking eggs correctly and delivering them on actual green avocado – all the while still managing to cause the breakdown of my entire psychological wellbeing with the provision of a wonky glass…
Ciel Tower – The tallest hotel in the world.
At over 377 metres high, Ciel Tower is home to the world’s tallest hotel – IHG’s Vignette Collection, Ciel Dubai Marina.
A short while back, prior to its opening, I tried to capture it at night from one of the neighbouring properties – but the haze had other plans, and while fun to capture, the shots never made it past my memory card.
This time, however, and hot on the heels of breakfast triumph, we decided to take the opportunity to eat at the newly opened Tattu, within the hotel itself.
With a fun elevator ride not designed for those with vertigo – and spectacular views over The Palm, this place matches an incredible destination with equally impressive food.
The only challenge was, they were clearly still in the early stages (I’d argue pre-opening, really), with hand-written signs and masking tape galore for snagging in every direction.
Still, it did give me the psychological shove I needed to try and get back to shoot a clearer night of this pretty impressive building.
The second livestream brought us back to Downtown from above.
With all our experience of the previous night (and knowledge of quite how loud construction was going to be), we prepared for the worst – only to find, bang on 12pm the workers went home. Turns out, National Day had saved the stream – and for the first time in this location we had silence!
(Albeit with the nets extended all the way – and dont’ tell me that wasn’t on purpose…)
Anyway, this was the best kind of live session because the scene changed constantly over the hour so we could explain, live, our thought process in terms of both capturing and editing the different phases of evening light as we went along.
With sunset 5 minutes before live, and out of frame, we picked off the three key “tones” of an evening above the city.
Golden (half) hour gave as structure and warmth.
Pink (half) hour gave us softness and lights.
Blue hour brought the city to life for the night.
That sequence is exactly why I prefer teaching on-location rather than through a neat little list of prescribed settings. The exposure, colour and edit shift as the scene shifts. There is no single magic value, just an edit that reflects (or fights) the scene as it evolved in front of you.
And yes, that sounds much less convenient than “use f/11 and it’ll be epic”, but I tend to find the lazier the photographer, the sloppier the shot.
Throughout the lives, we gave a glimpse into the “BTS of the BTS” – The view from that balcony provided a lot of context from our 360 camera.
Same recipe – producer Annabelle off-camera in control of the the stream visuals, tripods wedged where they could fit, our editing laptop glowing, cables everywhere and a bustling city below.
After so much height, shooting one of my “old faithfuls” – Al Garhoud – felt like a useful reset for David and I while Annabelle found something far more exciting to do than hang around with two middle-aged blokes under a bridge.
There’s no hero tower, no fountain show, no depth to a scene of urbanisation that goes on for miles – it’s literally just a cool illuminated bridge that creates a vanishing point when shot from below.
Over the years, it’s been transformed from a rough wasteground to (now) landscaped gardens and areas to sit with friends. Along with that has come the development of the shoreline – slightly spoiling the symmetry of the shot I used to enjoy, but still a good change of pace from being tied to golden hour.
That’s why I like locations like this. They force composition instead of relying on spectacle. You have to work with lines, reflection, timing and negative space.
Dubai’s famous views are famous for a reason, but the quieter locations often teach you more when you’re forced to focus. Plus, it’s nice to have a break from the bling…
It’s not the only bridge I’d look out for around the city – with canals and waterways that criss-cross every now and then, there are a lot of structures to enjoy (just make sure you’re not on private property when you do, as those guards have an incredible knack of moving fast when they see a tripod!).
Diseggpointment
And then, the egg.
I know it’s become “a thing”, but my needs are really simple – if you advertise that you can cook a soft egg, make sure you actually can.
From the “freshest” boiled egg I’ve seen in a long while, to ammunition for a cannon, to cold (yet runny) attempts and even one that had been hot-plated solid IN its “dripping” position – this was not a good trip for eggceptional breakfasts.
Oh, to head back to Caju for just one more morning…
Aaaanyway, we had a productive day ahead of us.
Location Access – Just Like Buses
We’d woken up to bad news.
Two of the day’s 3 locations had come back with some unexpected bad news – a clash, and a closure – so we wouldn’t be able to shoot.
Anyone who shoots cities properly knows this game. Access can matter more than settings, and it’s far more fragile. You can build the network, make the calls, confirm the doors, line up the timing, and still lose two locations before lunchtime because the real world decided to get involved.
Which is fine – if you haven’t already teased those locations on last night’s live stream…!
So, to distract ourselves from misery (while I fired off a few calls and messages), we took David to one of the most unasuming locations in the city – a simple footbridge.
Via a car that seemed to hypnotise him, some containers that seemed to threaten his sense of safety and one of the most exhibitionist approaches to apartment-living pools that you could ever rent or own.
But once the lift doors opened (which are 90% full of bicycles, despite signs everywhere banning them), all became clear…
The Helix-styled footbridge over the Water Canal is an incredible design – completely pointless to the function of the bridge, but so very impressive once you’re inside.
It was the perfect opportunity to use Capture One’s iPad tether for straight lines and focus checking down this looooong long corridor (oh, and the healing brush for those “not allowed” bike tyre marks all the way down).
Weirdly, I actually preferred another image I’ve shot of this bridge with Uwe a bit later in the day, mostly for the shadows, but also as it was on a new Phase One toy that’ll become clear sometime soon…
For the rest of the morning, however, it was back to scouting alternatives. Taking a few detours to some new rooftops, and all the “negotiations” that go with them, it wasn’t looking good for the evening – and time was pressing.
Old Faithful to the Rescue
It’s easy to get snobby about a view once you’ve shot it a few times. The rest of the world, quite reasonably, hasn’t been standing on that rooftop with you every year wondering whether it still counts.
So we popped in to my friends at Shangri-La Dubai.
To a local – it’s “standard”. To a frequent visitor – they’ve probably “done it”. But to those watching, this is still the incredible view that it’s always been since the moment that interchange was finished.
Sadly, with a “proposal” going on – we couldn’t use the usual corner, but we could shoot from one of the suites – perfect.
Sunset was gorgeous – soft light, turned pastel tones through the slight haze, and long exposures hid the horror of rush-hour traffic on the roads.
Even better, with a bit of luck, we managed to get onto the other side after that proposal had happened. (Those are rose petals, not blood stains, so we can only assume things went well!)
But it was a great reminder that for all the B.S. and “snobbery” over this location – sometimes those postcard (or “honeypot”) shots are photographer magnets for a reason: They look amazing.
With quite a few of these wide shots under my belt over the years (granted, the city is always different, but I had it in the bag) – I pulled out the 138mm Rodenstock again to see what we could get if focusing the viewer on the moving parts of this scene.
That’s the metro line running diagonally across – notice the little group of people sat having a phone-club meeting below?
No prizes – but I do love a little human easter-egg when we pull up a 50% crop…
Now what was that about buses?
Well, just like them, it seems locations have a habit of not being around when you need them, and all coming along at once the moment you’re sorted.
You see, what I failed to mention is in between sunset at the suite and night on the corner rooftop at the Shangri-La, we ended up darting 45 minutes down the road to make it for another friendly group who’d allowed us to capture one of my favourite top-down view in the city, back at Dubai Marina.
Chasing the final bits of blue hour, we got there just in time to capture, re-compose, capture again and run back to downtown for the Shangri-La balcony again later in the evening.
“Don’t Look Down” – that old adage in vertigo terms. Photographically, it’s exactly what we should do when building height into our scene. Just make sure you’re capturing wide enough to let that perspective distortion really go to town.
All that said, remember with every rooftop you shoot from, you become an ambassador for photography, and hold the future of access for others in your hands.
Height deserves respect, from you. Secure your gear. Check the tripod. DON’T overstep boundaries your hosts have given. Watch the wind. Keep loose bits away from edges. No image is improved by launching a lens cap at terminal velocity, and you don’t get praise for being “that idiot” who failed to engage their brain.
So – I said it was to be a productive day, right?
Mission accomplished.
Desert-ed Trees
The desert sunrise began with a flat tyre. Because, well, of course it did.
Travel photography has a lovely way of inserting admin into the best laid plans. One minute you’re imagining soft dunes and first light with the solo trees that your friend Uwe has promised you.
The next, you’re beside a road looking at rubber with the enthusiasm of a man reconsidering his profession.
Luckily, in such situations, Mr Grover takes on “dad mode” and we soon got on our way.
I’ve met many men by the roadside in the desert region of Dubai now – but Uwe is the most persistent of them all.
His quest to find the perfect lone tree spans many years, and he’s still on the hunt.
A year ago, he took me to a spot without GPS and with 30m visibility to “find a tree he once saw” – turns out if you walk in enough circles in 96% humidity in Dubai heat, you will eventually find one through the mist…
But today’s trip was different – the weather was better, the sky was relatively clear, and he had a target in mind. We were just tagging along.
And between annoying footprints, a giant red glow as the sun hit the horizon, a Crescent Dunes solar project spin-off (not a bad idea in the desert, right?) and views that I captured with my iPhone that I wished I’d taken my “big camera” out for – it was quite the morning.
Despite the flat tyre, we’d made it in time for pink hour – which delivered that perfect mix of soft tones and smooth gradients across both the sky and the dunes below.
The tree took on a silhouette, and I discovered Uwe’s boredom limit of 9.42 minutes before he has a medical requirement to move position just in case the tree decided to perform a different number…
The golden sunrise, on the other hand, added shape and shadow to the scene before us.
While many would heal, I chose to leave the footprints – after all, they were Uwe’s(!) – and part of the story.
What’s amazing about this place, however, is that in every visit I’ve made to Dubai, I’ve ended up in the desert at some point. Whether that was further south in Abu Dhabi, or here just an hour or so out of the city – it feels like an entirely different place to be, and a good reminder that these cities really are build on, and within, sand.
Road Trip – Abu Dhabi
Culture comes in many forms – and finding the trashiest food in any one location is one of my favourite past-times.
Having been up, yet again, well before the crack of dawn, today we were going on a road trip to Abu Dhabi and would obviously need some hideous snacks for such a journey…
And for your benefit, I can confirm…
- Avocado fake-pringles suck.
- Sour Juice Drop Gummies are fun, but there’s way too much injectable liquid for the number of holes.
- Hotdogs should not live inside stale cheese bread.
- When the UAE McDonalds say their McShaker Wings are “spicy”, they are NOT messing around.
With burning lips and culinary disappointment left at the service station on the way – we hit Abu Dhabi, and more specifically the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.
Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is not just another skyline stop on a photo trip – it needs a whole different mindset.
Space, symmetry, reflection, restraint (and not in the overused AI sense).
Most importantly, it commands respect.
Just in time for golden hour, the view of this incredible piece of architecture is stunning from any angle – but when coupled with the purpose-built reflecting pool across the road (yes, that’s a full-blown highway in-between) it’s nothing short of awesome to see.
At sunset, the marble picked up the warmth beautifully. The building doesn’t need much help – if anything, the key here is to capture it in a way that shows that respect without trying to find an “edge”.
Blue hour was the stronger moment, if I had to compare.
Without the sun on the horizon, and as a sky turned pink in an almost venus-belt-like transition to the deep blue of night that was creeping in from behind us. The reflections deepened, the white marble held its glow, and the whole scene settled into a calm, quiet, reflective moment with lighting that slowly began to show.
As it turns out, the lighting itself is designed around the phases and sequences of the moon – so the illumination during a full blue moon will be different to that of a waning half moon in the same month.
After dark, the pools and architecture became more graphic.
Still beautiful, but less soft. Another mood, another version, another reason to stay a little longer with my iphone than our schedule allowed…
…because, yes – it was 6:15pm, we were 1.5 hours away from our streaming location, and we were live at 8:00pm…
Traffic in Dubai Marina sucks.
What doesn’t suck is a room service pizza dinner 5 minutes before we started, blasting through some images we hadn’t even had time to see ourselves live online with viewers, and then editing the final round of cityscapes of this series on the Capture One channel.
And that was it – 3 live streams, thousands of raw files, a heck of a lot of learning and some incredible views.
By the end, we had worked through Marina rooftops, Downtown balconies, construction-obscured views, laser tests, bridge locations, Sheikh Zayed Road, desert dunes and the Grand Mosque.
If ever anyone wants to guarantee a collection of “city shots”, Dubai is on my list. This was a great example of why.
Access helps. Timing matters; blue hour matters even more.
Local knowledge saves wasted evenings. Haze needs reading, not fighting. And sometimes the best photograph is not the one everyone travelled across town to get.
For anyone visiting Dubai with a camera, there are pictures everywhere.
For anyone looking for a Dubai print, the city offers everything from electric blue skyline drama to quiet desert colour and the calm of Abu Dhabi after sunset.
For anyone wanting to photograph Dubai properly on a private workshop, the value is in knowing how to work the place, rather than simply arriving at the same viewpoints as everyone else.
Where to stand, when to wait, what to ignore, when to move, and when to stop fiddling with settings long enough to actually look at the city.
Dubai will always provide the lights – the image still has to be captured.
Reiffer’s Final Thoughts
On our way back, my final reflections felt familiar to these trips…
- I wonder how many hotels I’ve now left a pair of completely worn trainers in now.
- Disposing of a webcam is really difficult in a 5-star hotel, they really want you to be sure!
- The British Airways Concorde Room lounge refit was a complete and unfettered waste of investment.
- That investment would have been better spent on cookery skills. “Wagyu burger” my ________.