Welcome back to the Middle East!  I mentioned last week that we’d be wrapping up the Middle East tour here on Picture of the Week in United Arab Emirates, a country I had been to previously.  This go around I only visited Dubai, and I have to admit, exploring it the second time was a different experience.  Last year when I visited I mainly wandered around this one area of the city that was near my hotel – it was stunning, but also really easy (and fun) to get to.  If you followed along last year, you may also remember that I got harassed daily for having a tripod until I finally just quit bringing it out with me, and this year I didn’t even pack it!  Thanks to modern camera advancements, tripods are necessary less and less, especially for street photography.  I would still prefer to work off of one, but it’s not always necessary.  Anyway, this year what I decided to do was try to find a few scenes I had missed last year, for whatever reason.  

One such scene is the one pictured above.  This is a bit of a postcard shot, but not immediately apparent where it is located.  I scoured Google Earth until I was positive I had found the intersection featured in the photo and then was able to work out how to visit it.  You’ll note that I’m not revealing the location, as that’s part of the fun, but I’ll give you the clue that if you eat at the very nice Chinese restaurant downstairs, you don’t have to pay to visit the observation deck.  🙂

After visiting that building, I also went to several others, including the “picture frame building”, as seen below.  Several of the city images obviously taken from a high vantage point were taken from up top!  

More next week!

–Dan Thompson