EMIRATES PALACE HOTEL

'Emirates Palace Hotel - the crown of Abu Dhabi' Little needs to be said about this architectural icon; Emirates Palace Hotel in Abu Dhabi is one of the most revered landmarks on this planet! Tech talk: As usual, I took a long time to plan this shot. I scouted the nearby areas using the Google Maps. I chose to shoot from the nearby tower which is still under construction. Once I secured the shooting location, I was presented with a breathaking sight of the Emirates Palace Hotel, its elaborate landscape and nearby urban context with almost surgical precision and near perfect achitectural symmetry. I knew instantly that the shot is going to be something special. 30th floor turned out to be the optimal height for this panoramic capture; not too high to throw the horizon and that painterly sky outside of the composition, not too low to obscure the Emirates Palace's immaculate landscape and the marina in the upper left side of this frame. Everything was where I hoped it would be. I set-up my camera, fixed it to the rather wobbly scaffolding and wooden boards (there was no concrete laid where I stood yet....). I waited for the pefect moment and approximately 15 minutes after the sunset, I was ready to start firing my shots. I decided to divide the panorama into 5 vertical strips from side to side while making sure i had at least 30% of overlapping between the frames. Any less than that and Photoshop's panoramic 'stitching' function would most likely fail. I opted for an HDR output because I really wanted to capture the glorious architectural as well as landscape lighting without losing the highlight details. Wide dynamic range also rendered the deep blues and inky blacks without any crushing of shadow details. I took 5 bracketed exposures for each of the 5 strips from -2EV to +2EV. Shortest exposure was 7s, longest was 2 minutes. Promote Remote Control was used for this difficult bracketing scenario where longest exposures exceeded the limit of 30 seconds on the Canon 5D Mk2's light meter. RAW frames were pre-processed in Lightroom 4.4. Very minimal optical corrections and tweaks were needed because the output from Canon 50mm f1.2L lens is close to perfect. I created 5x HDR frames in Oloneo PhotoEngine. I made sure that the tones were rendered with the most natural looking colours. I wanted this panorama to appear spontaneous and effortless to the eyes. All I needed with a natural dynamic range without the cartoonish colurs and forced contrast usually associated with HDR photography. 16-bit TIFF frames were then exported for final processing. Last step involved stitched of the 5 photographs into one seamless panorama, devoid of any creases and 'jumps' due to extensive delay which occured during the capture of 25 photographs. Several hours later, this panorama was finally completed. Minor sharpening was needed to bring out the fine details in the textures but other than that, this image didn't need any other tonal or colour adjustments. That's the advantage of working with the HDR images. In May 2013, this image was submitted to the 3rd annual 'Spaces of Light' photography contest held each year on Abu Dhabi. Out of 5,500 photographs by 550 photographers from 75 countries, it ended up winning the 2nd place. https://www.facebook.com/Benosaradzicphotography