Before I arrived to Abu Dhabi I was given a bunch of activities to choose from and one of the available options was a tour of the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. Ever since I watched the video of the 3D mapped projections on the mosque two years ago I’ve been fascinated by the mosque. I hadn’t seen or heard of the mosque before that video and after watching it I thought that place looked really beautiful.
I was put up at the Ritz Carlton in Abu Dhabi which was located practically across the street from the mosque and as I drove by on my way to the hotel I realized the place was as big as I imagined it would be. On the second day of my visit I was taken on a private tour of the mosque and I loved it. While still outside the mosque the first thing you’ll realize is that you can see the courtyard inside since the sides of the mosque are open and overlook a pool of water giving the place a very open feel. Once you walk through the main entrance the first area you get to see is the large courtyard. The sky was a nice blue and the mosque was crystal white so I was able to get some beautiful shots of the courtyard before we were led to the other end where we had to take off our shoes before being taken inside the mosque. Once inside I just couldn’t focus anymore, there was so much to see all around with one of the largest chandeliers in the world hanging above my head to the worlds largest carpet below my feet. The walls and ceilings were all intricately designed and I was just wandering around with my jaw dropped while the guide was explaining everything. It’s such a beautiful place and like nothing else I had ever seen before.
If you’re in Abu Dhabi and want a tour of the mosque they do offer public tours a number of times a day. You can find out more about that on the mosques website along with more information [Here]
Since I knew before hand I was going to visit the mosque I ended up borrowing the super wide angle Sigma 12-24mm lens from AAB World. If it wasn’t for this lens I wouldn’t have been able to capture the mosque in the way I did in the photographs above. Especially once I was inside the mosque since a normal lens wouldn’t have been able to fit so much detail and architecture all into one shot. I was planning to have a stand alone review for this lens but while I was getting all the photos ready for this post I realized sharing these photos would be the best review I could give it. It’s definitely not a day to day lens but on occasions like this I wouldn’t want to be stuck without this lens.
11 replies on “Abu Dhabi: Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque”
beautiful photos Mark! I was pretty sure it’s that lens when I saw the first picture.
Way too much distortion on the wide angel lens.
Well there has to be distortion because it’s a wide angle lens, the lens is basically squeezing a large view angle into a small photo. If you consider 50mm the normal actual view, at 12mm it’s squeezing more than 3 times that view into the same space.
Have you tried DXO correction? On the website it looks pretty amazing.
https://www.dxo.com/intl/photography/dxo-optics-pro/features/optical-corrections/lens-distorsion
That’s a different kind of distortion where straight lines curve kinda like what fisheye lenses do. This lens doesn’t suffer from that problem which is why it’s so great.
A lot of the converging of vertical lines is part from the lens and from where you have the lens pointing, how far up or down from the horizon.
I have the Nikon 14-24 and I use it a lot. I was recently surprised by a published photog. who used it for one of his people projects.
The mosque is beautiful. Spending a week all day photographing and you still won’t be done with the potential of this place.
You said you borrowed the lens from AAB. Do you mean they rent lenses out? Or did they give you on a personal basis?
I borrow lenses from them every now and then to review on the blog. they don’t rent lenses.
If you liked this then next time your in Spain check out the Al-Hambra palace that’s definetly something worth adding to the list of places to see
I was going to say that about Al Hambra palace in Spain but CJ beat me to it. Similarly, the Grand Suleymania mosque in Istanbul and the Taj Mahal in Agra should definitely be on your Masjid watch list.