theonlyD800inthehameau
Photography by theonlydeadheadinthehameau
Thursday Doors: Abu Dhabi (last time)
Posted on July 7, 2016
This week’s door may be unspectacular, but holds a special significance. It’s the entrance to the apartment in Abu Dhabi where we lived for ten years (2002-2012). Good memories and no regrets.
And, to be fair, the view from inside looking out on the other side wasn’t too bad:
Thursday Doors 7 July 2016
Weekly Photo Challenge: Curve
Posted on June 18, 2016
The dramatic curve of the entrance to the Manarat Al Saadiyat exhibition centre on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi seems like a suitable entry for this week’s Photo Challenge.
Guiding the viewer
Posted on June 6, 2016
The latest task in Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge is to guide the viewer: in other words, to compose your image so that the viewer focuses on what you want them to see within it, rather than be distracted or have their attention drawn away from what they ‘ought’ to be looking at.
Bright Spot
The intended subject of this image, of a church interior in Rochechouart, is the decoration on the columns and walls on the left, but the eye can’t help but be drawn to the bright spot of the stained glass window on the right: so it has to go, leaving the focus of the image as it was intended:
The S Curve
A curved object in an image is almost always more interesting and attention-drawing than a straight line and, as Cee points out, it’s a common and perfectly respectable technique in pictures involving roads. Here are two images (the one on the right is a cropped version of the first) of light trails at the T-junction. Apart from eliminating the distractions of the vehicles stopped at the lights on the bottom left, the tighter crop’s curve also takes precedence in the eye over the otherwise intrusive angular traffic-light gantries.
Flipping The Horizon
Sometimes you take a photograph and it’s fine – except that you wish it could be the other way round – a mirror image. Of course, through the miracle of editing software it’s now very simple to get the image you want simply by flipping it. The two images below (taken just along the road on a sunny autumn day last year) are identical in every respect except that one is the mirror image of the other. Can you guess which was the original and – more to the point – which one do you prefer?
(Sometimes an image can also benefit from being flipped upside down, as I did recently in my contribution to the June One Photo Focus.)
Capital carving close-up
Posted on June 4, 2016
The precision and detail of the carving on the capital of a marble column in the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi is clearly brought out in this monochrome close-up.
Composition: Arabian Landscapes
Posted on May 3, 2016
The latest instalment of Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge calls for landscapes. Like many ‘generalist’ photographers, I take a lot of landscapes but for the purposes of this post I decided to confine myself to ones from the Arabian peninsula.
Taken in the desert outside the oasis city of Al Ain, this image has a strong leading line, while the rocks in the foreground provide perspective:
This was also taken just outside Al Ain. In terms of composition techniques, the road provides a diagonal, but, with camels grazing beneath electricity pylons, I like it as a metaphor for the entire country: modernising while trying to retain and respect tradition.
This third image was taken in a small bay near the city of Muscat, in Oman. Not all of the Arabian peninsula is covered in sand dunes, and in Oman the volcanic rock of the Hajar mountains provides an impressive backdrop to the beaches and cities. Technically, you have the rule of thirds and the parasols on the beach provide perspective, while the contrasting colours of the orange buoys in the blue sea are also a compositional feature:
Finally, two photographs taken on the nature reserve of Sir Bani Yas Island that feature all these compositional factors. On the left, another example of the same contrasting colours, while the slope of the hillside gives a diagonal and the two groups of antelope give perspective. On the right, a solitary oryx heads off into the sunset. The two pictures were taken at more or less the same time, towards sunset, and it’s interersting to see the difference in the quality of light depending on whether the sun is behind the camera or in front of it.
Spot the cheetah
Posted on April 29, 2016
For this week’s theme of hiding or camouflage, here’s a cheetah at the Sir Bani Yas Nature Reserve in Abu Dhabi. (Apologies for the pun, but I couldn’t resist it.)
Composition: The Outtakes
Posted on April 19, 2016
We’re having what the French call a pause pour reflexion in Cee’s Compose Yourself Photo Challenge this time around. A time to think about the ground we’ve covered already and also an opportunity to show some images that didn’t quite make the cut for posting under the various topics that we’ve dealt with in the past months. Here’s a selection of mine:
Perspective
Now, what is this a picture of? Is it the building on the right (the apartment block in Abu Dhabi where we lived for ten years)? Or is it the glass-plated building on the left? Or perhaps it’s the reflection of the former in the latter?
Diagonal Lines
I used an image of two giraffes in my first posting on the topic of diagonal lines, but I could equally have used this profile of a horse – one of many in the fields around here.
Now two images that cover more than one aspect of the various topics we’ve looked at so far:
Leading Lines & Analogous Colours
A hillside vineyard near the village of Ay, in the Champagne region shows blue and green together, as well as leading lines
Geometry and Contrasting Colours
Orange and blue dominate this image of a seal at Taronga Zoo in Sydney. Obviously the balanced ball is one geometric shape but the curve of the seal’s body is like an arc of a circle.
Weekly Photo Challenge: Future
Posted on April 9, 2016
When I saw that this week’s topic was ‘Future’, I knew exactly which image I wanted to use. Unfortunately, I didn’t take it (my son did) and nor do I have a copy in my library. However, the immensely talented Madame made a wall-hanging based on it, which now sits over our stairs. Here is my photograph of that:
It shows our twin grandsons taking their first unaccompanied walk together down the beach to the Arabian Gulf in Abu Dhabi. It always looked to me that they were heading off into the future.
I think I know why, too. When I was about their age now (eight), I remember a big – or so it seemed to me at the time – picture painted on the wall of the old Birkenhead Market. It showed a boy and a girl heading off down a path together towards a brightly shining sun: As I recall, it was actually an advert for childrens’ shoes and was captioned ‘The Highway To Health’. Anyway, the photo on the beach brought it back to me.
Thursday Doors: Abu Dhabi (again)
Posted on March 24, 2016
My earlier posting of a door in Abu Dhabi was uncompromisingly modern. This one, however is not so much a door as a still-life with bicycle. This irresistible combination was found down by the water in one of the older parts of the city.
Thursday Doors 24 March 2016
Colour basics
Posted on February 15, 2016
Cee’s Composition Challenge has now moved on to colour basics (I’m sorry; I just can’t bring myself to spell colour without the ‘u’), beginning with the difference between the warm and cool ends of the spectrum.
Cool
To begin with, two cool images from the United Arab Emirates; on the left, a mosaic ceiling panel from Wafi Mall in Dubai, while on the right is part of the landmark blue glass-plated façade of the Bainunah Hilton on the Corniche in Abu Dhabi.
Warm
By contrast, two notably warmer images: on the left, my grandson crawling through a brightly coloured tunnel in a childrens’ playground in Abu Dhabi. On the right a bunch of flowers from a table in the music room of Chateau d’Amboise.
Finally, two pictures, one warm and one cool. These were taken at the entrance to a cafe in a shopping mall near Circular Quay in Sydney. They are two individual images, as shot, illustrating that the same view of the same subject could be either warm or cool, depending on the light.
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