Thursday 16 December 2010

Burj Khalifa

After 3 weeks at sea I've not had a huge amount of time to get the camera out unfortunately. This was a picture I took last winter in Dubai, not long after the Burj Khalifa was competed. At 828 m (2,717 ft) it's the tallest man made structure ever built (for now at least). It was quite a hazy shot to begin with and I've been playing around with layer modes in photoshop lately and thought it could improve this image. I used a copy layer with hard light style at 100% opacity and then another copy layer set to multiply at 35% opacity. The original is below for comparison.
Canon 7D, Canon 18-135 @ 118mm, ISO 100, f5.5, 1/640

Wednesday 1 December 2010

Suez Canal Bridge

Canon 7D, Canon EF10-22 @ 10mm, ISO 1250, f3.5, 1/80
 Canon 7D, Canon EF10-22 @ 10mm, ISO 1250, f5, 1/30
 Canon 7D, Canon EF10-22 @ 10mm, ISO 1250, f5, 1/15
 Canon 7D, Canon EF10-22 @ 10mm, ISO 1250, f3.5, 1/60
Apologies if this makes anyone a little seasick. I' not usually a fan of squint horizons but I thought I'd throw this one on there anyway.
Canon 7D, Canon EF10-22 @ 10mm, ISO 1250, f3.5, 1/60

We've been at sea for 2 weeks now which doesn't do a huge amount for a hobby like photography. The odd tanker on the horizon not making the greatest subject matter.
I had been looking forward to trying to get a couple of shots of this bridge which crosses the Suez Canal though. It's a very impressive structure with a height above water of 70m, giving a Suez Max height of 68m for vessels.
The bridge is also known as Mubarak Peace Bridge or the Egyptian-Japanese friendship bridge as for some reason 60% of the cost of construction was footed by the Japanese.
The bridge is 3.9 km (2.4 mi) long, consists of a 400-metre (1,300 ft) cable stayed main span and two 1.8-km (1.1 mi) long approach spans. The height of the two main pylons supporting the main span is 154 metres (505 ft) each. The towers were designed in the shape of Pharaonic obelisks.
Was hoping to get to the bridge a little earlier than we did. The sun had set a good hour before we actually sailed under it so much boosting of ISO to be done.