Taking only photographs – leaving only footprints
Walking around a building lets you see the various angles and possibilities of photographs. If you drive to the Museum of the Future this is the road up to the main entrance and carpark. I liked the way the green slopes and trees contrast with the stainless steel facade. My favourite view is on the other side of Sheikh Zayed Road. Take a look at the Museum of the Future during the day and it looks even more spectacular at night.
Taken from the amazing Museum of the Future as you can see from the curve on the far right of the photograph. This is the view looking north across Sheikh Zayed Road, a 12 lane highway that runs through the centre of Dubai. Stood here I wondered how I would get to the other side of the highway and if I would have to pay for a taxi. Thankfully there was a pedestrian underpass that took me to the other side to capture my main photograph of the Museum of the Future. I’m not going to list the names of all of the many skyscrapers here but the curved building on the left that goes out of frame due to its height is the Blue Tower Building. It has a McDonald’s on the ground floor.
The first time I saw a photograph of the Dubai Mall Waterfall I questioned if the men diving in unison were real people. They are fibreglass sculptures. The waterfall comprises of two large cylindrical walls 30 metres in diameter and 24 metres high. This spans three floors of the mall. Photographing the waterfall I tried not to cut any of the sculptures arms or legs off. This is impossible unless you zoom in on just one or two of them. I wanted to show a wider view as I think this is more dramatic. Adding to the drama is the black and white processing. There isn’t much colour in the sculptures themselves, they are a silver or bronze looking colour.
The Burj Lake is a man-made lake in downtown Dubai at the base of the Burj Khalifa. This photograph was taken at dawn so there were very few tourists in the area. There were a number of small boats and workers on the lake. It looked like they were testing the water and cleaning the tiles. Since this was taken at the end of last year, a five month renovation has started. This includes upgrades to the fountain, the flooring, technology and maintenance systems. It’s possible that this manual cleaning and maintaince work will be done with robotic technology in the future. The Burj Khalifa Lake is huge, 30 acres. To see the scale I have a photograph of the Burj Khalifa Lake from above taken on a previous trip to Dubai.