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Today I was watching a really cool video of seven base jumpers making full use of Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands Hotel roof and it reminded me of a shoot I did a while ago at Meydan, the venue for one of Dubai’s most well know races – the Dubai World Cup. I spent 2 full days there shooting most of the hotel interiors and exteriors and one of the more impressive places was the infinity pool on the roof.

Overlooking the race track, the pool sits in the shadow of the massive elongated roof and provides amazing views of this huge structure. This particular image was taken from inside the bar area where I managed to climb very close to the water in order to get a full unobstructed view of both the pool and the roof above.

To view the original shot (straight from the camera) visit the blog entry here: www.momentaryawe.com/blog/?p=3282

A couple of weeks ago I posted “Patches of light #1” taken at Cabo da Roca on Portugal’s Atlantic Coast, promising I’ll have a couple more images from the same day as there was such beautiful light. In the meantime I changed my mind and I think I prefer the shot I’m posting today. It’s a lot simpler, but I just love the different shades and colours in the clouds and the reflections in the water.

To view the original shot (straight from the camera) visit the blog entry here: www.momentaryawe.com/blog/?p=3278

One of the things I was able to take from my recent short Mumbai trip was a kind of extra awareness to what is going on around me in order to raise the camera quickly to my eye and capture a fleeting moment. Because things happen fast on the streets of Mumbai. People come and go, taxis pass you by in an instant and kids will only give you their attention for a split second.

This was the case with the photo below. These guys looked very strange together and the scene immediately caught my attention. The older guy on the right was working hard polishing or sharpening something while the younger guys were sitting there watching the world go by. For only one moment their attention was not directed at me and although I shot quite a few frames of this, the one below is the first image because in all the other ones everybody was looking at me, either posing too hard or looking uncomfortable.

To view the original shot (straight from the camera) visit the blog entry here: www.momentaryawe.com/blog/?p=3267

With all the new developments in Dubai, the older parts of the city get sometimes ignored. Dubai as a city started along the creek that splits it between two distinct parts – Deira and Bur Dubai. I needed to shoot some sunrise images of a building on the Deira side of the creek and the light was so beautiful that I ended up spending more time than I initially planned.

One of the well known buildings on the creek is the headquarters of the Emirates NBD bank (the one on the left), a beautiful building built in the shape of a sail which always looks great during sunrise or sunset and which I’ve always loved photographing. I wanted to give the impression of a very calm and quiet morning so I used the Singh-Ray Vari ND filter to be able to have a longer exposure and flatten the movements in the water. This also created some interesting patterns in the glass of the buildings (almost like it was a polarizing filter) and gave the whole image a very warm look.

To view the original shot (straight from the camera) visit the blog entry here: www.momentaryawe.com/blog/?p=3262

So I survived a crazy weekend (actually more like 36 hours) on the streets of Mumbai shooting pretty much all the time and taking small breaks for a bit of sleep or a bit of coffee! Like I mentioned in a previous post, I went to Mumbai over the weekend together with two friends who are very keen street photographers and who have recently joined the “blogosphere” with a cool photography antiblog. While street photography is not really my biggest love, I had a great time and managed to get away with a few nice shots which are a bit different than my usual stuff.

We had no specific plans about the locations where we would shoot with the exception of the loose phrase “hey, let’s go somewhere where there’s lots of people”. Well, Mumbai has 20 million people so we were definitely covered there! Things were made infinitely easier by Arsh who’s been a reader of my blog for over two years and who graciously offered to show us around and take us to some places we would have never found on our own. Thanks Arsh!

Now on to today’s image… We landed in Mumbai very early morning on Friday (4am to be precise) and we figured that our best chance for some cool scenes at that hour would be a train station. We got a taxi to Victoria Terminus, a busy train station with beautiful Victorian Gothic revival architecture and plenty of people milling about. Outside the train station many taxi drivers were waiting for clients and I spotted this old guy thinking I’ll try something different. I’ve asked one of my friends to hold a bare flash pointed at him, while I was shooting through the window. I’m really happy with this shot as I think it’s got almost a cinematic feel to it, but as always I would love to hear what you think.

To view the original shot (straight from the camera) visit the blog entry here: www.momentaryawe.com/blog/?p=3255