Staying at home has given Dany Eid a newfound appreciation for the view outside his balcony.
While most of us are still adjusting to our makeshift home offices, as residents are urged to stay indoors due to the coronavirus pandemic, the situation is arguably more challenging for photographers like Eid, for whom mobility is a key requirement of their work.
"What would a home office mean for us?" Eid asks fellow shutterbugs on his weekly blog, in which he posts about his experiences as a landscape and cityscape photographer.
“We could be tidying up our photo libraries, editing some images, checking online tutorials or browsing what other photographers are sharing online. But after some time, you miss holding the camera and shooting,” Eid, who is also one of the official photographers of Dubai Expo 2020, writes.
The Lebanese photographer, however, has learnt to make the best out of the situation. Clutching his Canon camera on his balcony, Eid started photographing the skyscrapers huddled on the Dubai Marina skyline.
Scroll through the gallery above to see some of Dany Eid's photographs, taken from his home balcony.
"My balcony overlooks Dubai Marina as well as parts of Jumeirah Lake Towers," he tells The National. "It's an impressive view, but there were still some limitations to consider."
Having a restricted vantage point means there’s only so much you can do in terms of composition, but Eid says the limitation has inspired him to think more creatively and experiment with different equipment.
“I used a wide angle lens as well as Telephoto lenses to capture as many details as possible,” he says, adding that he also began photographing the buildings during different times of the day.
“Shooting during the day time can be ideal if you want to take close-up photographs, play with shadows and later convert the shots into black and white.”
Eid says more interesting photographs can be taken during the 'golden hour', which falls in the early morning and late afternoon, as the light is softer then. Shooting during this time can also achieve more dramatic results, especially if the sky is cloudy.
Eid’s favourite time of day to shoot, however, is during the 'blue hour', the period of twilight when the colour of the sky ranges from blue to dark blue.
The timing of golden and blue hours will vary depending on where you are, so Eid recommends using the PhotoPills app to make sure you don’t miss them.
And then, of course, there’s night-time photography, which can present its own set of challenges.
“When photographing a city or skyline at night, one of the most critical factors that will impact the image is light metering and to control the highlights in post processing,” Eid says, adding that he is careful how much light he lets slip in by adjusting the shutter speed and the f-number. “I usually do multiple exposures and blend several images together in Photoshop.”
There’s also the weather to consider, though Eid says he was lucky with how that changed over the past few weeks. “It rained and I was able to capture the lightning along with the skylines.”
