The Night Owl

Mar 20 2009 Fri

It was a late Thursday night, the rush hour traffic plus the fact that it is going to be a weekend proved to be difficult for everybody to get the convoy going to the other side of the Dubai coastline, to the emirate of Fujairah.

This was a part of an outdoor trip of a photography group which i was in, and which i was out, and with a little bit of angelic persuasion i was "in" again. lol.
Well i wouldn't wanna miss this part.
And the fun has just began.

We started from Dubai at around 10:30 pm with convoy of close to 40 vehicles ( sedans, 4x4 cruisers, Jeeps, a Hummer and three mini buses).
At number three position we obviously should be the third car on the convoy but guess what, as stubborn as a dust bunny, in 30 minutes we are already miles away from the main group and speeding up into the night with the equally mulish car No. 20 and No.28 close behind us!
Talk about male pigheadedness.

The Night Owls

In short we got scolded and stopped somewhere at Ras Al Kaimah, ate some superb chicken sandwiches and waited for the convoy to catch up while enjoying the cool night air.

The drive to the camping site took more than three hours since the convoy was slow moving. I didn't enjoy the landscape much because it was dark but i know that we are passing by the rocky mountain cliffs carved for the roads we are on.

When i smelled the sweet and tangy scent of exposed rocks on a low tide, the algae, the decay of those dead beach critters and salty air I knew we are right on the spot.

The Habitats (171 seconds)

Soon tents where brought up and bonfires lit and in no time the place was filled with thick smoke from the grilled pork steaks. Yeah UAE! And "drinkable fluids" too. The papaitan is close to heavenly.

Moonshine (310 seconds)

The glare of Dubai's city lights are absent on this remote area, it was close to pitch black and VLE or very long exposure shots are a good way to test wether your rig can handle "amp noise" very well. But its too dark that I cant lock focus so going manual on hyperfocal distance method is necessary.

Starlines over Fujairah (372.8 seconds)

The D40 did quite well on 300+ seconds and i think i can even go further without problems.
Well, shame on the higher pixel Nikons. Lets see if you can beat D40 on VLE's.
A warning though: Turn off the noise reduction function!

Stars and clouds (261 seconds)

If you examine closely the stars are blurred in a concentric way. This means that the earth is rotating. I was so sleepy i couldn't get anymore of this.

View from inside the Habitat (171 seconds)

A few glasses of scotch made me dizzy at almost 4 am and decided to have an hour of sleep before sunrise.

I would soon realize that the lack of sleep and some scotch on the bloodstream and then hitting the sack very late is not a very good idea if you want to catch some early morning action.

Next: Road Trip.

Route (green line)