Category: Photography

I was lucky enough to get a private tour around the new Jumeirah Messilah Beach Hotel today and I have to say I loved the place. When you pass by it on the highway it looks like one giant building but once you’re inside its a completely different world. I really left the place impressed and I managed to take some pictures to share with everyone here. My favorite thing has to be the fact that they have a lot of Islamic design incorporated very beautifully into the design which you can see in some of the pictures below. The beach is a lot bigger than it used to be and they’ve built a very nice marina, not for boats but for swimmers which I think is cool. The place will have around 400 hotel rooms, 60 apartments and 12 private chalets. They’ll also have three pools outside, 2 large ones and 1 small one for kids. They’ll also have an indoor pool. Click continue below for all the pictures I took. Completion date is set for May 2010.

Ra’ed Qutena the photojournalist took pictures showing the aftermath of the wedding fire and uploaded them onto flickr. Looks like nothing was left standing. [Link]

Thanks Nibaq

I took these today with my Nikon D90 and 50mm 1.8/f lens. I was freelensing with the lens held the wrong way round to get the macro ability. No retouching, just some minor color color grading. The yellow flowers were growing from a white plant which I hadn’t seen before.

Update: Added some more. Also I’ve placed some typography (NIN lyrics) on some of the shots to help bring out the picture.

Yesterday marked 64 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in Japan by the United States. The Boston Globe put together 34 photos that showed the aftereffects which you can view [Here]

Film Swap is a pretty great idea and its cool people are actively doing it. This is how film swapping works, you take a picture with your film camera and someone else across the world does the same thing. When you’re done shooting your roll of film you mail it to the other person and they mail you their roll of film. You then take their film and load it into your camera and shoot over his film. You end up with a double exposure of two different random subjects from two different countries together in one shot.

Yahsheik is a photographer in Kuwait that is film swapping and you can check out his pictures on Flickr. So far he’s swapped films with photographers in Philippines, USA, Japan and Thailand. Check out the pictures [Here]

It seems some old pictures I scanned of my mum back when she was a flight attendant with Kuwait Airways in the 70s are being forwarded around by email as Kuwait Airways in the 70s with no credit to their original source (me!). Sucks but hey that’s the Internet. Here is the link to my original post with more information and pictures. [Link]

I found a video online of photos of Kuwait taken right after the Gulf War so I emailed the owner of the video asking him if he could send me the pictures to post and he did. This is the description that was attached to the video:

We were sent to Kuwait in May 1991 to rebuild the Kuwait International Hotel for an upcoming conference. The project was canceled soon after we got to Kuwait due to security concerns. Kuwait City at this time, just a few months after the first gulf war, was in shambles. Almost nothing worked and there were vast amounts of arms still lying around. The fires were still going strong. So much so that flying into Kuwait was like entering an outer circle of hell.

All 74 photos below are credited to B. Dietrich, AIA

Beautiful picture from 1964 of a young Indian couple in Kuwait. I wonder if the houses in the back are still standing. [Flickr]

via 2by4.org

I went jet skiing today and took my new cheap ass water proof camera (pictured above) to try out. The result? Astonishing! Because the camera is so cheap and poorly built I think while winding the film or rewinding, the internal plastics rubbed against the film scratching it. The end result were photos that look like they were taken decades old! The heavy vignetting (the darkening near the corners) also came out pretty cool. Overall I love the effect and it came as a complete surprise.

Got this camera for only KD2.5 from Amsterdam. Its a waterproof 35mm camera which I thought would be perfect to take while jet skiing this summer.

We took the train to the Hague in the morning so we could get there at noon when all the shops open up (its Sunday). Once there we decided to pass by the seaside towards the pier where there is a bungee jumping place. Nat ended up bungee jumping and I am trying to upload the video online but the connection here is pretty slow. It was a beautiful sunny day but it was FREEZING cold.

Magic Planet opened up at Avenues and it looks really great. What I think makes the place special is the minimalist design of some of the toys which all seem to take form of white bugs. I took the picture above but a friend of mine (Thanks Ibrahim!) emailed me a ton of pictures which you can check out by clicking on continue below.

I took this shot outside the Avenues at around 2:15PM with my iPhone.

I first spotted this on Some Contrast and then this weekend I ended up driving by it on the way to Marzouqs place so I decided to stop and take a picture of it with my Yashica. If you want to see the previous artwork that was on display there click [Here]

This camera takes pictures anywhere from once every five seconds to once every 24 hours and then combines them all into a single high resolution video. The weather-resistant camera comes with 2GB of storage enough for up to 18,000 shots while the cameras battery lasts up to 4 months shooting one picture every hour. Its made to use in your garden but I can think of a million other uses and at $159 its pretty cheap. [Link]

via OhGizmo!

Update: Its available on Amazon for cheaper, only $139 [Amazon]