Contrasts - Oman and Abu Dhabi: introduction

At the beginning of February 2010 we spent a week in a hotel resort in Oman followed by four days in Abu Dhabi staying with friends. This gave me the opportunity to take photographs for the Contrasts assignment in an interesting but unfamiliar environment. I decided it would be useful to set out my experiences, some images and comments in the order that these were taken, rather than record only the final portfolio. I hope to bring together the selection of images for the assignment after recording the experience.

The process of looking for subjects that would suit this assignment was more exploratory than it would have been at home. I would envisage beforehand that certain subjects would have the potential as subjects e.g. the swimming pool was a potential subject to portray "liquid" or "transparent" characteristics. However, my expectations were only occasionally realized when I came to the location. On the other hand, on a number of occasions subjects materialized that I had not anticipated.

My approach to the assignment was to list down the characteristics individually, against which I noted potential subjects and the types of composition that would emphasize the desired characteristic. At the end of the day, I would flick through the photographs on the LCD screen noting which ones were potential picks and which subjects I still needed to find. At the end of the ten days, I had pictures which would potentially would represent 14 of the 21 pairs of characteristics.