Early morning at the mosque

[dubaiphil]

Well I had the chance to visit the Sheikh Zayed Mosque at both ends of the day on Tuesday. Sunset and blue hour is obviously best shown in colour, but I prefer black and white for the early morning shots.

I couldn't access the building itself in the morning (it opens at 9am) so had to compromise and take this shot from the car park.


It's a 3 minute and 20 seconds exposure (looking back I could have gone a step further and moved to ISO 100 to stretch it to 7 minutes, but never mind), using stacked 3 stop and 10 stop ND filters at f18 and 28mm to avoid vignetting on my 24-70mm.

[jeeperman]

I like it Phil, but I think I would have liked it even more at 7min.

[Ken Curtis]

Well done, Phil. It is a very contrasty photograph that certainly shows how large and impressive the mosque is, and it shows off all the architectural features. It certainly shows, dare I say, the beauty of the design and one can only imagine how many man-hours were spent constructing it.

I don't know if the photo could be improved by lightening only the shrubbery to show a little more detail there. Just a thought I had which may not have any merit.

[Bobobird]

Impressive structure and well shot.

[easternlight]

Hello Phil,

I would love to see a 7 minute exposure too, to see what that does with the clouds. An idea to remove the "sharkfinn" in de left low-corner? A nice picture though!