I gained many wonderful Islamic friends while I was in Saudi Arabia, and several of them told me if I could ever go to Abu Dhabi I must take photos of the Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque. At the time it seemed unlikely, so I just filed that information away.
But when I arrived in Abu Dhabi to work, one of the first things I saw in a magazine was a full-page ad for a photo competition at the mosque. Sheik Zayed was the founder of modern Abu Dhabi and the UAE - he was a visionary man who took the massive influx of oil money and used it for the good of his people and his nation. He is revered and beloved, for good reason. One of the many structures he commissioned, as a gift to the nation, is the Grand Mosque.
So with little preparation or research, I visited the mosque half a dozen times in April to see what photos I could get to enter in the competition, which ended 5 May. I whittled it down, made my selections, prepared the final image files and uploaded them on 1 May. And didn't hear or so anything else about it until last week!
I'd pretty much assumed none of my images were selected (I was correct) and that they just didn't publicize the result. Turns out they just hadn't gotten around to it yet. At the beginning of last week I got an email inviting me to attend the awards ceremony downtown. It was a fairly simple proceeding, and I'm glad to have gone. It started 20 minutes late because the dignitary VIP guest presenter wasn't there yet, the intro video took 15 minutes, the actual awards took 15 minutes, and that was it!
No surprise to me, I didn't win anything. The winners were mostly Filipino photographers, and there were 2 Emirati women and 4 men who also won. I have no complaints about the images selected - one of them was a very unique approach - but you know about beauty and the eye of the beholder.
My images are in my style, and were my vision of the place, and it wasn't what they were looking for. I am pleased with my results.
I've been busy, and forgot that I'd not shared these, so without further ado, here are my submitted photos of Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque:
#AbuDhabi, #UAE, #SheikZayedGrandMosque, #uaeexpat
But when I arrived in Abu Dhabi to work, one of the first things I saw in a magazine was a full-page ad for a photo competition at the mosque. Sheik Zayed was the founder of modern Abu Dhabi and the UAE - he was a visionary man who took the massive influx of oil money and used it for the good of his people and his nation. He is revered and beloved, for good reason. One of the many structures he commissioned, as a gift to the nation, is the Grand Mosque.
So with little preparation or research, I visited the mosque half a dozen times in April to see what photos I could get to enter in the competition, which ended 5 May. I whittled it down, made my selections, prepared the final image files and uploaded them on 1 May. And didn't hear or so anything else about it until last week!
I'd pretty much assumed none of my images were selected (I was correct) and that they just didn't publicize the result. Turns out they just hadn't gotten around to it yet. At the beginning of last week I got an email inviting me to attend the awards ceremony downtown. It was a fairly simple proceeding, and I'm glad to have gone. It started 20 minutes late because the dignitary VIP guest presenter wasn't there yet, the intro video took 15 minutes, the actual awards took 15 minutes, and that was it!
No surprise to me, I didn't win anything. The winners were mostly Filipino photographers, and there were 2 Emirati women and 4 men who also won. I have no complaints about the images selected - one of them was a very unique approach - but you know about beauty and the eye of the beholder.
My images are in my style, and were my vision of the place, and it wasn't what they were looking for. I am pleased with my results.
I've been busy, and forgot that I'd not shared these, so without further ado, here are my submitted photos of Sheik Zayed Grand Mosque:
(note - I don't know what's up with the white interference over the dome
in the shot above. I've loaded 4 different versions of this shot, and
they all show up in here with that blotch - sorry! I'll keep trying to
get it clean! mwg)
(note - I don't know what's up with the white interference over the dome in the shot above. I've loaded 4 different versions of this shot, and they all show up in here with that blotch - sorry! I'll keep trying to get it clean! mwg)
#AbuDhabi, #UAE, #SheikZayedGrandMosque, #uaeexpat
