Country
United Arab Emirates
Coordinates
25.20° N, 55.27° E
Best hour
Sunset, then thirty minutes of dust-red sky
Continent
Asia
The fastest vertical construction in human history, standing at the edge of one of the oldest deserts.
The interesting frame here is never the tower on its own. It is the boundary: the last tower, and then sand, immediately, going on for six hundred kilometres. Shoot from the desert side at dusk and the city becomes a thin bright strip under an enormous sky.
Dust is the medium. Fine airborne sand does to Dubai what fog does to London — it separates the near towers from the far ones and turns a hard skyline into layers. Photographers wait for clear days here and get flat pictures.
The wild neighbour
Greater Flamingo
Phoenicopterus roseus
Ras Al Khor holds thousands of flamingos inside the city limits.
