Dubai!

On the 27th of August, I left for Dubai with my boyfriend! I packed and repacked my suitcase a million times in order to take everything with me I needed (and not just what I wanted). We had an evening flight, so we arrived in Dubai nice and early... 7 am. The flight was amazing. We were on the Airbus 830, which I believe is the largest passenger plane. It was extremely luxurious. We had a lot of leg space, we each had our own screens, there was a ridiculous amount of movies and tv shows to watch, there were games you could play, the airplane had little star lights at the top, etc etc etc! It was amazing. The airplane also had 3 cameras, one at the tail, one at the wheels, and one at the front and throughout the whole flight you could check out the cameras to see what was going on. Obviously, it being a night flight there wasn't much to see other than landing and take off, but it was still really exciting. Unfortunately I only got 2 hours of sleep on the 7 hour plane journey so when we arrived at Dubai at 7 in the morning, I was exhausted. We weren't able to check into the hotel until 2,  so we dropped off our suitcases at the hotel and went to The Dubai Mall.

When we arrived it was "only" in the 30s, which super high humidity, but during the day it got up to 44 degrees celcius, again with super high humidity. When you walk outside the air feels hot and heavy and horrible. Luckily we hardly had to walk outside as there are enclosed bridges everywhere.

The Dubai mall is HUGE. It's the largest shopping and entertainment destination in the world. It has an aquarium and an olympic sized ice rink, amongst other things. But also millions of shops. Literally. It was an endless mall, we haven't even seen everything! It's a mixture of America and England. There were shops like Bath and Body Works, Victoria's Secret, Sephora, BHS, Debenhams, Boots etc etc etc.

As soon as we could, we went back to the hotel to check into our room. We were absolutely exhausted and a bit overwhelmed.

The next day we went back to the Dubai Mall again in the morning to get tickets for the Burj Khalifa (tallest building in the world), but the earliest tickets we could get were at 8pm! After getting the tickets we walked back to the metro and went to visit the Mall of Emirates. The metro ride was amazing. There isn't a driver, so we sat all the way at the end of the train so we could see out the back. We saw beautiful views of the Burj Khalifa, although it was incredibly hazy.

After the mall of emirates, we went to The Gold Souq. Dubai imports 500 tonnes of gold per year, and has an annual business excess of Dhs 25 billion. That's why Dubai is known as the City of Gold. We walked through the Gold Souq and it was incredibly overwhelming. There were people everywhere trying to sell you gold. The only shops there were selling gold. It was crazy.

At the end of the day we went back to the Dubai Mall to visit the Burj Khalifa. It's 828 metres tall and almost twice the height of the empire state building in New York. The lift went up 10 metres every second. It was an amazing view at the top, the photo below is of the Dubai Mall. You can see how gigantic it is!

Although I sound super excited about Dubai, it was a bit of a disappointment. I thought it was going to super glamorous and beautiful, but in reality it was a huge construction site. It was as if it wasn't finished. It was a great experience, but I don't think I'll be returning any time soon. On the 30th, super early in the morning, we flew to Singapore where we'll be spending 5 days. And on the 3rd we leave for Melbourne.

Motion Blur

I am still in love with motion blur photography and did quite a bit of that in The Netherlands. I started taking some photographs at the three country point (3 landen punt) and fell in love with them. I was shooting digital and without a tripod, so the images look very different from my large format photographs.

These three images are just a few of my favourites from the day. They are all completely different and I don't think they would work as a set. The top left photo was taken at about 4 in the afternoon when the sun was still up in the sky. I honestly don't know how it got this beautiful boukeh effect, but I think that's the reason the photograph works. The top right was taken as the sun was setting. It shone through the trees and I shot right at it. It created these intensely bright lines that contrasted with the darkness of the surrounding trees. The colours in other photographs taken in this area were a lot more vibrant, but I liked the fact that the sunlight almost looks like a fire. The bottom left photo was taken away from the sun in a much more densely packed area. I didn't focus on the tops of the trees (emphasising the green), but I looked more at the trunks of the threes and how the sunlight hit that to create different colours. I'm absolutely in love with this photo. I think it's very unique and different from the others.

A few days later, I visited a small village in Germany called Monchau. It was a very nice little place and I took some more motion blur photographs there. The photo I took were completely different to anything I'd done before; they were of buildings. The photo to the right is my favourite, although every one else who I have spoken to prefer the two photos below. The photo to the right is taken of the front of one of the houses. The black panelling creates vey interested shapes and makes the photo look a bit haunting. Although the lines on the building itself aren't completely straight, the line at the edge of the building is dead straight. It almost makes it look like it's framed, or that there are two photographs next to each other. It's a very abrupt end.

 These two photos are a lot more vibrant. The village had lots of flags everyone, the sky was completely blue and there was a lot of green from the trees. This created a huge contrast with the black and white of the houses. The first of the two photos is a bit more identifiable, than the second, however it's just blurred enough to still be confusing. Because I used a slower shutter speed, there isn't as much movement and it has made the colours a lot more visible. The second photo was a much longer shutter speed and thus the colours look a bit washed out.

 I'm really impressed with these images from Monchau. I never expected motion blur images to work this well of buildings. I guess I was a bit stuck in my tree photos! I'd like to continue this style of photography when I'm in Australia as it's very unique and different. It's a lot of experimentation though, especially without a tripod!!

Update!!

It's been a ridiculously long time since I last blogged. July has been a hectic month. It started with me quitting my job at Subway and moving out of my flat in Portsmouth. Soon after that my brother came to visit from America. After that it was my 21st birthday and my graduation!! That was followed by my boyfriend's graduation and immediately after (the day after) driving to Belgium, spending the night in a chateau, and then driving to Holland. Only to continue the hecticness and celebrate my parent's 25th wedding anniversary and my grandparent's 50th! We spent some time at the "3 landed punt" (three country point) where Holland, Germany and Belgium touch. We then celebrated my brothers 23rd birthday, drove back to the UK and now I'm spending some time with my boyfriend's family before we leave for Australia. Phew. Crazy!

The first thing photography wise that happened is my time-lapse! In my previous post I mentioned some scenes from my Portsmouth time-lapse video and I finished it soon after. I absolutely loved creating the time lapse and was overwhelmed by the response. It was like my dissertation coming alive! It reached 1000 views within a week. It's now stalling at 1600 views. It got mentioned on the University of Portsmouth Alumni Association on Facebook and later got featured on Strong Island. After that it was picked up by "Shaping the Future of Portsmouth" who also featured it on their website.



After that I graduated!! I'm super happy with the marks I got, I would have obviously wanted to graduate with a first, but I did get at least one first in every single unit.

I'm also not sure if I've mentioned this before on my blog, but I sold some work! After the Eldon exhibition, way back in May, I was contacted by someone from the University interested in my work. I got contacted by three different people, but only one ended up buying my work. They were interested in my 7591 Miles project, and asked about prices. It was really difficult to come up with a reasonable price, because I spent SO MUCH money on it, and did want to make a profit. I gave the buyer some options and they ended up wanted to get it in A2 and mounted on MDF instead of diabond. I got it printed in Brighton, so had some more lovely day trips to there, and gave it to them the day before I moved out of Portsmouth. I'm so happy to have received such an amazing response to my photos! It's really boosted my confidence and I'm excited to continue in this style of photography.