Dragon mart - Dubai

Dragon mart. An awesome trading place in dubai. When you get tired of the luxury costly stuffs from the polished malls of dubai, you can got to dragon mart. It is located on the 'al ain road' way away from the busy dubai city. You can find anything with the cheap and best price. Specially the chinese items.

Dragon Mart provides a very huge market place for the supply of Chinese products in the Middle Eastern and North African Markets, offering Chinese traders and manufacturers a unique platform from which to cater to the needs of this sizeable market. This was Inaugurated on December 7th, 2004, the 1.2 kilometre-long Dragon Mart is the largest trading centre for Chinese products outside mainland China.
The 150,000 square meter dragon-shaped structure has 3,950 shops engaged in the wholesale and retail trade of a variety of Chinese products including home appliances, stationery, office appliances, communication and acoustic equipment, lamps, household items, building materials, furniture, toys, machinery, garments, textiles, footwear and general merchandise.

With over 2,500 parking spaces, the shopping centre is divided into seven zones offering an array of high quality facilities for visitors and traders alike, making it the largest Chinese commercial centre in the MENA region. So just make sure where you have parked your car how to get out of there. Otherwise you will get lost.

smoke photography

Smoke photography is nothing but taking picture of the smoke in a dark room with speedlights and flashes and get an abstract type of image in your camera. This is not that easy as you think. This require little bit of hands on experience on your DSLR settings as well as you should master the angles of speed lights.

If you like to have a look at some other photos i took recently please check my photography blog. www.shafisgraphics.blogspot.com . If you would like to know more details on any particular photographs, please let me know. 

Learning photography is tricky. Learning smoke photography is even more tricky.

I will just go through some of the samples I took few months ago. Remember speed light is a must at least one. A black dark back ground is also required. I used my black t shirt in on a chair as a back ground. Well first lets go through the images then i will go through the settings.

The setting I used for this image is f/4, iso 100 and shutter speed 1/100. And i used a flash to iluminate the white smoke. 

OK This is the top view of my simple setup. Now i will explaing the set up step by step.

Step 1 : Arrange the black cloth (I prefer to use black cloth instead of blackboard because its much effective in reducing the reflection) of the far side. Position the camera and the flash as shown. also the thing which you are going to burn in the middle.

Step 2: Camera settings. Put the camera in the manual mode. and set the ISO to 100, Shutter speed 1/100, aperture f minimum (that means maximum opening). Dont forget to connect your SLR with the flash unit.

step 3: Simulate smoke. And click.

step 4: post processing. This s bit tricky. Because the color of smoke will be white and the background will be black. Some time smoke may not be absolute white, but shades of grey. The you have to open the picture in photoshop and then add tint or shade of colours according to your imagination.

Here is some examples. Which i tired my self.

Al rams - ras al khaima

This is from my recent visit with couple of friends to a fishing harbour in ras al khaima - UAE.

This place is an old village but holds the heritage and business as well as culture of the old arabian village. This place has a history. Which is almost on it faded pages of history. May be for few more years you can see this place as it is from the 100s of years back. May be this place will be restored and kept as a moment from the past. Or may be some corporate may put a beach resort in this beautiful old place.

From wiki pedia :

Ras al-Khaimah (alternatively Ra'sal-Khaymah or Ras el-Kheima; Arabic: رأس الخيمة‎ Rā's al Ḫaima) is one of the Persian Gulf Arab sheikhdoms forming the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Its name means "Top of the Tent". The emirate is in the northern part of the UAE, bordering Oman's exclave of Musandam. It covers an area of 1,684 square km. The capital city and home of most residents is also called Ras Al Khaimah. The emirate had a population of 210,063 at the 2005 Census, of which 41.82 percent or 87,848 were Emirati citizens. Latest estimates put the total population at between 250,000 and 300,000. Locals accounted for 97,529 in the population estimate for 2010.[1] The city has two main sections, Old Ras Al Khaimah and Nakheel, on either side of a creek. It is served by the Ras Al Khaimah International Airport. It consists of a northern part (where the city of Ras al-Khaimah is situated), and a large exclave in the south (near Hatta), and a few small islands in the Persian Gulf.

We had to start a liitle early to reach there, so that we can cover the beautiful rise and early cozy seens of the harbour. From Dubai to Ras al Khaima its 1 hours travelling time. Straight high way. But due to the smog we arrived on the spot little late. But still sun was below the horizon. I clicked around 270 photos. And i would like to share few of them here. This is as it is not photoshoped or edited. I had made little adjustments to the brightness and contrast and saturation. But nothing else.

People who work here are manily from indian sub continent. Their bosses are the local people around ras al khaima. Here people are getting ready for the job.

Already one team is set for sail. 

All the boats were parked in a raw. their reflection in the water made an amazing view.

Sun rays hitting the water. 

There were 100s of birds circling around this island 

I got a macro lense from my friend. Then i tried to see the marine life.

home of unknown creatures

Long exposure photography try outs.

Light trails.. life trails

An admiration. An appreciation. Just the voice spelled by the word "wow". This is what you get for the hardship and home work you have done make something a success. You will take pride for the rest of your life and the rest of people will talk about for a few days. Share the admiration and envy the success and then done. Its gone. Its forgotten. Its a part of never written pages of history.

I know a lot of people personally and professionally who is the type who can bring that "wow" into you. Most of them are lost in the days of that unwritten pages. Nobody remember them now. May be there's too much pages. May be there's nothing at all. I recall them as heros of that time.

All you can recollect from the past was useless pieces of memories. When I try to put all in a place, the heros were nomore heros. When the time passes all you get is light trails of memories. Very vague.