City Lights in the Arabian Night

Dubai is a city which showcases some of the most spectacular modern architecture to be found anywhere in the world. The views of these incredible – and often beautiful – man-made structures emerging from the heat and dust haze of the Arabian desert landscape on the shore of the Persian Gulf often lead me to imagine that I am looking at a scene from the future: a city rising from the dust of a post-apocalyptic desert. In terms of photographing modern architecture and cityscapes, for me at least, it doesn’t get any better than Dubai. Photographically speaking, the only thing I miss are clouds, as there’s normally not whole a lot going on in that Middle Eastern sky to keep it interesting – just blue, blue and yet more burning blue (did I mention blue?).  Don’t misunderstand me – I am partial to a blue sky, particularly as they are not ten-a-penny in my native England – but in terms of making a photograph, city skies are generally more captivating with a few of the puffy white things in ‘em.  A possible solution to the blue-sky-no-cloud problem is to shoot at dawn, sunset or twilight, when the sky may be suffused with varying shades of colour.

When I made this photograph, it was almost night, and I had the feeling of viewing a scene from a neo-noir movie – a dystopian city state in a Brave New World, like something from the film Blade Runner, and this is the mood I was hoping to communicate here. I could almost picture Rick Deckard (A.K.A. Harrison Ford) hurtling between the buildings in a “Spinner“, and I started looking furtively over my shoulder for replicants – although to be fair, maybe I had already downed one drink too many in the hotel bar.

The spire of the Burj Khalifa – currently the tallest man-made structure in the world – is visible in the distance, on the left of the frame.

Sheikh Zayed Road – Dubai, U.A.E. (© Ian Mylam)

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This entry was posted on Thursday, March 1st, 2012 at 7:37 pm. It is filed under architecture, Dubai, Middle East, urban and tagged with architecture, Dubai, dusk, Middle East, night, skyline, urban. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.