Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Atlantis

The Atlantis Hotel is located on Palm Jumeirah Island and I never took any decent shots of it. But now a friend from DSLR-Forum told me about this photo location and showed me one of his pics - that convinced me I'd have to go there as soon as the weather would allow it. All these years I had been thinking that this spot was completely fenced in and not accessible, unless you would sneak in... Now I found out that you just have to park your car at the mosque and there it is, a vast open beach at the very tip of Palm Jumeirah just opposite the Atlantis Hotel. Cool!

The Atlantis Hotel is the icon, the landmark of Palm Jumeirah. However, I personally don't really like it. If you walk in you will recognise that it is actually one of the few places in Dubai where you can see and breathe the artificiality of its existence. Most hotels actually do a great job at creating an atmosphere of heritage and consistency. They would make you believe their place had long existed. Madinat Jumeirah and The One & Only Royal Mirage are great examples for this. Not so the Atlantis Hotel. It's so cheesy, Disney World would find it hard to compete! The interior looks just cheap compared to other hotels and yet the staff is the most stuck up throughout Dubai.

Well, let's not get carried away. The exterior looks splendid, I do admit. Still a bit cheesy, but certainly an eye-catcher. For this photo I used my Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lens and again aligned it to the horizon in order to eliminate geometric distortion.

The image is a slight crop of the original.

45mm, f8, 30s, ISO 200

Post-processing included the following steps:

Lightroom
  • Temperature: 2800K
  • Tint: +10
  • Exposure: 0,00
  • Recovery: 30
  • Fill Light: 20
  • Blacks: 7
  • Brightness: +50
  • Contrast: +25
  • Clarity: 15
  • Vibrance: 0
  • Saturation: 0
  • Export to Photoshop
Photoshop
  • Apply Spot Healing Brush
  • Apply Smart-Sharpen Filter: Amount 60%, Radius 1.3px
  • Slightly crop the original
  • Save as TIF
CaptureNX2
  • Apply U-Point to upper right corner of the image (it was comparatively dark due to bright moonlight coming from the left): Brightness +10
  • Convert to sRGB with perception based rendering intent
  • Save as JPG
Photoshop
  • Insert watermark
  • Save as JPG
Cheers,
Sebastian


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