Dubai - world in a bubble
To continue the UAE experience, I bring you Dubai- the city that lives in a bubble and is like a movie set. If anyone has seen the movie "Inception" (one of my favourites), driving around Dubai and seeing if from the Burj Khalifa reminds me of the scene near the end of the movie where they walk through the imaginary city. The decadence of the buildings and incredible feats of engineering required to build some of them really need to be seen to be believed. It really is an incredible city. It's no wonder people call it Gotham, the most opulent city of modern civilisation according to the League of Shadows. Whether the city will fall - only time will tell but it certainly has teetered a few times over the last 5 years. As Dubai has no oil, it depended on Abu Dhabi to bail it out on a number of occasions.
My trip to Dubai was a surprise 21st birthday present for me from my brother and his partner. We took a cab there early morning because they had booked tickets for a tour of the Burj Khalifa - the world's tallest building. The cabbie was probably Nepalese or Indian and, it turns out, had only arrived in Abu Dhabi a few months previously. We had left in plenty of time (it's a 90 minute drive) but every time he approached the speed limit on the 4-lane motorway, the sat-nav/radio would beep with a Siri-type voice warning him that the car was approaching said speed limit. He kept breaking and time was getting tight now. Cars were passing us out left and right. Anyone who knows me will know that I am a generally calm, relaxed car passenger with little or no temper (*cough*, *cough*, ahem). However, I was starting to lose it in the front seat and offered to drive for the poor unfortunate cabbie so that we would get there on time. He said that it was the taxi base Siri warning him of the speed limit. I explained to him, in the calmest voice I could muster, that that was a load of rubbish (or some such word). We could see the building in the distance and the sense of "near yet so far" started to creep in.
I think the spirit of Paul O'Connell came out of me because I must have put the fear of god/allah/yahweh/shiva/buddha/khuda/santa claus/me (take your pick) in him. Had we missed our time slot, that was it...we wouldn't be going up the Burj Khalifa. With much beeping and the Siri-esque-like warnings blaring out of the sat-nav as we pulled into the basement of the Burj with a few minutes to spare, we ejected ourselves from the moving taxi and ran like we were appearing in a Tom Cruise movie and made it on time...but only just. Speaking of Tom Cruise, this is a clapper board from one of the MI movies signed by the man himself which greets one as one begins the tour of the Burj (what a segue, eh).
And so, the tour began. At over 828 metres (2,716.5 feet) and more than 160 stories, Burj Khalifa holds the following records: tallest building in the world, tallest free-standing structure in the world, highest number of stories in the world, highest occupied floor in the world, highest outdoor observation deck in the world, elevator with the longest travel distance in the world and tallest service elevator in the world. The ticket allows you to gain access to the observation platform, which is 124 floors up! It takes less than 1 minute to travel up to floor 124 in the elevator, with ear popping and the stomach lurching - here is a video of us coming down from the 124th floor.
The building itself is incredible and seems outrageous to be honest. Is there really a need for something like this? To state the obvious about dominating the skyline seems redundant but...it just dominates the skyline. It's mind boggling really. I've seen very tall buildings elsewhere but this was like looking at the cover of a Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov or William Gibson book cover. It is a fantastic feat of engineering and the tour is superb in illustrating what had to be done to design it, redesign it, redesign it again and finally build it.
The views from the observation platform are superb. The air was a bit dusty (unsurprisingly) so clear views at that height over a long distance were not brilliant but it didn't take away from the "wow" factor. It is just phenomenal. The wind forces at the top of this building are immense and how anything could find shelter up here seems impossible. However, right outside the observation platform glass was this massive Oleander Hawkmoth. The first time I had ever seen one so I was delighted. Such a cool and beautiful moth with a 4 inch(!) wingspan.
Apart from the moth, the views of the surrounding buildings and desert were fantastic and well worth seeing. The tour lasts about an hour but one can spend as much time as one wants on the observation platform. I would highly recommend going to see the building and if possible, take the tour. I know that my brother booked the tickets quite a bit in advance so I would recommend doing this to avoid disappointment :)
After the trip to the top of the Burj, we headed to the Dubai Mall...unsurprisingly the world's largest shopping and entertainment area (5.9 million square feet, 150 escalators etc.). Here is a view of the Mall from the observation platform of the Burj...the building is just enormous.
If one is into shopping, then this is obviously orgasmic but if one is not into shopping, then the Aquarium and Zoo is worth a visit. The Aquarium tank is one of the largest in the world (51m x 20m x 11m) and packed full of sharks, rays, fish and other aquatic beasties. Upstairs from the tank are further ecosystems such as rainforest, desert, coral reefs and island life. Myself and my brother went off in there while T went on a walkabout. There was also a Cheesecake Factory eatery which I was very excited about. For any BBT fans out there, Penny wasn't working...unfortunately. I was hoping to get her number!
As well as having the aquarium, shops, eateries etc., there is also an ice rink (with some clever advertising on the ice shaver), fantastic sculptures, water features and, of course, the indoor ski-slopes and chairlifts. Bizarre looking at people walking in in full ski gear when it is 40degC outside. Within the ski slope arena it is -4degC so it is quite cold but I imagine a nice dry cold. It's like looking into Santa's grotto. The money required to provide this must be ridiculous. Just another hint at the extravagance of the city/country.
Apart from the Burj and the Mall, there is also the Palm Jumeira, the Burj Al Arab (4th tallest hotel in the world) and some nice eateries with some nice pints along the way. It was a brilliant day out, hitting the tallest building in the world, tail gating Lamborghinis, getting a boat trip around the hotel near the Burj Al Arab and getting cabs everywhere. There is a fantastic bazaar in the grounds of hotel near Burj Al Arab where we walked around, had some nice coffee and fed the Common Mynah's hanging around the tables. Tom Cruise stayed in one of the villas amongst the buildings there, which is only accessible by boat! It's a crazy town, totally disjointed with lots of wallet-waving and a "mine is bigger than yours" mentality. Buildings just appear out of the ground with nothing else around so the city itself is like a collection of islands linked by cab rides and traffic jams.
The building below is one of my favourites
Dubai is well worth going to visit but only to visit, just to take it all in. I wouldn't fancy living there - just not my cup of tea. There are decent birdwatching areas there so if I spent some time looking there, I might like the city a bit more ;) All in all, it was a superb day out and we had such a laugh. We ended the day supping on pints and eating some nice food while looking out on a marina and the setting sun before heading back to Abu Dhabi by taxi again that night. A wonderful and unexpected birthday present.
With thanks to my legend of a brother and his amazing partner T for their unfailing hospitality and for making my holiday during my 21st b'day year a memorable one. For anyone who doesn't know what my brother looks like, here is a photo I took of him while we were in the zoo section of the aquarium in the Dubai Mall :)
All photographs were taken with the Canon PowerShot G12.
Cityscapes in Abu Dhabi, UAE
I was fortunate to spend a week or so in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) back in April 2013. My brother (currently) lives in Abu Dhabi with his missus and so I headed out for a well-earned break to visit them. While not my first time in the Middle East, it was my first time in the UAE. I spent the vast majority of my time in Abu Dhabi and a day's visit to Dubai. As this will be a photo-heavy post, I will do one post on Abu Dhabi and the other on Dubai.
I flew into Abu Dhabi in the middle of a sand storm (see above) and the biggest thunder and lightening storm the region has seen in a long time. I woke up to a sand-covered and sand-enshrouded Abu Dhabi the following morning but thankfully that only lasted 24 hours. The pandemonium caused by the rain signified how one becomes accustomed to certain things in life, such as lack of rain. The earthquake on the 3rd day was the icing on the cake for the trip. I had brought armageddon or armageddon had followed me.
I found Abu Dhabi to be a more relaxed and friendlier city than Dubai. The buildings are less garish and pompous than those in Dubai but they were still incredible. The shopping malls and wealth within them was hard to take or comprehend at times. I was surprised (at least it was unexpected) at the relaxed and quite "liberal" mood within society there. This is comparing the country to my experiences in Egypt (Cairo, Luxor) and Sinai in the early 2000's.
A view of the marina and largest flag in the world when looking in the direction of downtown Abu Dhabi from the largest mall in Abu Dhabi, the Marina Mall.
Part of the beachfront of Abu Dhabi (above) along the fantastic Corniche.
The wealth is quite obvious looking at the cars, boats, types of shops selling high end wares etc. but there was the regular shops as well selling wares for folk not benefitting directly from the oil wealth. Those folk are the non-nationals brought in to work in the service industry, construction, etc. They also work the taxis, which are a crucial way of getting about the city, particularly in the heat of day for an unclimatised Corkman. The taxis are cheap and equivalent to a bus fare here in Irish cities when getting from A to B. The taxi fares in Abu Dhabi are cheaper than the LUAS fares in Dublin for equivalent distances and longer! With fuel at 10c/litre, it is not surprising that cars are cheap to run and hence taxi fares are comparatively very very low.
Construction is still ongoing in the city with new buildings popping up here and there. Here are a new set of buildings across from the Emirates Palace Hotel. The hotel is a 7-Star hotel and situated on over 100 hectares of landscaped gardens, and has 1.3 km of private beach (see below and spot the bird if you can). The designs of the new buildings are right out the imaginations of a film set designer.
The modes of transport in Abu Dhabi range from the humble bicycle to buses bringing cheap labour into the city for the day to top end sports cars. With no road tax to pay and insurance quite cheap (relative to rip-off and litigious Ireland), the cost of fuel at 10c/litre, a lot of big, fast and thirsty cars are affordable to run...if one can afford to buy one of those big, fast and thirsty cars in the first place :)
The Grand Mosque Centre (below - http://www.szgmc.ae/en/) was built to honour the "noble deeds and contributions to humanity, and to commemorate the legacy" of the founding father Sheikh; and it is a most magnificent sight. The cost to build this complex would have quite easily covered the bail-out money "we "(the Irish people) "agreed" to take on board.
Oh, by the by, the carpet inside the Grand Mosque (above) is the biggest single-piece carpet in the world (5,700 square meters) and the chandelier in the background weights 12 tons and contains Swarovski crystals. Madness!
Of course, the desert climate is harsh and construction materials suffer from the cold and hot cycles of the desert environment. Some buildings, such as the apartment complex below, are ravaged by this environment and crumble over time. This building is probably 20-30 years old and has now been abandoned and was due to be pulled down over the summer.
Even the positioning of the small mosques around the city can be dwarfed and somewhat lost among the upwelling of buildings.
Certain projects just don't get off the ground at all. This is, literally, a road and, what has now been named, a "Bridge to Nowhere". It is on the outskirts of the city, officially called the Hodariyat Bridge, and is used by folk to run and cycle on. It is (currently) the largest cable-stay bridge in the UAE and links the western coastline of Abu Dhabi to Hodariyat island (1.3km long and 29m vertical clearance of the channel). It was very surreal walking over this fantastic bridge with a perfect tarmac surface across the six lanes and ending on a desert island with little on it but sand and hardy plants.
I wonder how long it will be before the ravages of the desert environment take its toll (pardon the pun) on the bridge and it crumbles into the Persian (Arabian) Gulf? The island is marked for development under the Abu Dhabi 2030 plan where Emirati housing will be built initially on Hodariyat island. We walked across it in 40degC heat which was a tad unpleasant :)
It was a great week spent with my bro and his missus. I had a blast and would love to return to the country again for longer and head south for some birding so as to give the bro a bit of peace!
A classic tourist photograph of the bro and I by the gold dispensing ATM situated in the Emirates Palace Hotel. "GOLD to go"...different world.
All photographs were taken with the Canon PowerShot G12, Samsung Galaxy SIII or iPhone 4. I used the G12 at either auto ISO or auto aperture with the ND filter constantly on. I found that I got mixed results and went fully manual at times. The zoom lens was handy for getting nice and close but to be honest, the quality of the images were not what I had hoped for. The lack of image quality prompted me to look into getting a different "point-and-shoot" camera. More on that in a later posting.
Pelagic Photography
The opportunity to photograph typically pelagic birds such as shearwaters, skuas and petrels comes around infrequently. The reason being that it requires hiring a boat, getting a source of chum ready to induce vomiting by all on board and a hardy bunch of birdwatchers and/or photographers together to make it economically viable. This opportunity arose during August 2013 from Dingle in the form of the famous "Ed's Pelagic". Ed's trips out of Dingle in August generally score Wilson's Petrel (or your money back apparently!), skuas and large shearwaters. With a massive passage of Cory's and Great Shearwaters off the south-west Irish coast tand a trio of Fea's Petrel off Galley Head the previous week, hopes were high of scoring some good species. As kick-off was 8am at Dingle Harbour, I spent the previous day enjoying the good weather and the Dingle Peninsula/Slea Head area. Getting a good nights sleep was important before heading out on the boat the following day in what could be heavy seas.
The image above was taken using the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III and the Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens (1/800; f/8; 70mm; ISO 200; +2/3 eV). Slea Head itself is a fantastic place with incredible vistas and windy, narrow roads to test the driving skills. I was fortunate that the day was glorious with some scattered clouds and blue skies. The wind picked up later in the day and some rain came in that night, which was all forecast. I was hoping that the wind would die down the following day and some high cloud would settle in. I think that high cloud when photographing seabirds makes getting the exposure correct much easier. When in a seabird comes flying in at speed towards a small boat being thrown about by the North Atlantic swell, the last thing one needs to be fumbling around with is exposure compensation!
(Looking across at the Blaskets (An Fear Marbh) - taken with the iPhone 4)
The following day, the day of the pelagic, was calm, zero cloud cover...but lumpy. This was going to be challenging. The problems with working from a platform that moves about unpredictably, gets turned by the tide and waves into the glaring sun are many. Getting the settings on the camera correct, keeping the subject in-frame and in-focus, not getting the gear hit with spray and rogue waves(!), and not falling over when concentrating on taking an image - these are just a few things to think about. The biggest enemy on this day was the glaring sun...there was no cloud cover which made judging the exposure difficult against the water. The bounce of the light from the waves illuminated everything quite harshly. I was hoping for some cloud but alas, it never arrived.
We did see some nice species such as Sabine's Gull, Great Skua, Sooty Shearwater, Great Shearwater, Manx Shearwater, Blue Fulmar, Storm Petrel and a single Wilson's Storm Petrel. The swell was lumpy, not too bad but enough to make locking on to a subject difficult. Another factor which didn't help matters was the amount of Great-blacked Gulls around the boat. This didn't encourage the shearwaters or petrels from staying around the chum for too long. If I get out next year again, I think going further out to avoid the large gulls will be important to hold the smaller seabirds around the boat.
Some people ask me what lenses I would recommend bringing on such a trip. I would most certainly leave the 500mm in the bag because on a such a small boat, it will be impossible to handhold it. If I was on a larger boat, such as a passenger ferry or cruise liner, then I would use it on a monopod or tripod. I bring a lens with a focal length of 400mm and have the 70-200mm in the bag on a second body for cetacean action. Ideally, I'd have a 300mm f/2.8 or f/4 with a 1.4 extender. This combination works really well apparently, having spoken to fellow photogs who use it. On this trip, I used the 400mm f/5.6L Non-IS lens with the Mark IV body. The 70-200mm f/4 was on the Mark III (full frame).
Below are a selection of images from the pelagic:
Sabine's Gull
Great Great Skua (aka Bonxie)
Great Shearwater
Sooty Shearwater
Storm Petrels because petrels are magic....
Gannet
Northern Fulmar
"Blue" phase Northern Fulmar (from the Northern latitudes)
The above bird images were taken using the Canon EOS-1D Mark IV and the Canon 400mm f/5.6L USM. The camera was set to Aperture Priority, f/8. The exposure compensation was dialled in generally at -0.33eV but this was changed plus/minus as the boat turned into the sun etc. I also was using back-button focus which resulted in me missing a lot of images. I ended up deleting about 98% of images due to camera shake and other factors. The lack of IS on the lens does not lend to the use of back-button focus on a moving platform! For the next trip on such an erratically moving platform, I will switch the camera shutter to focus/expose instead. This should increase the number of keepers on the next pelagic.
Behind The Lens
The Irish Independent magazine on Saturday 14th September 2013 featured me for their "Behind the Lens" series. The series is to feature "celebrated Irish photographers showcase their proudest works". It was quite an honour to be asked to contribute to this series. The original image and the piece itself can be seen below.
It was great publicity for the new book "The Birds of Ireland" with Jim Wilson as well. Fingers crossed the piece received some positive feedback.
Reviews for The Birds of Ireland
Some recent reviews on our latest book http://www.collinspress.ie/the-birds-of-ireland.html
There was a very nice piece in the Cork News about the day-in-the-life of Jim Wilson (http://thecorknews.ie/articles/daytripper-jim-wilson-11988).