A view of Qatar

[PaulC]

I did some "arty" stuff with the Pentacon Six. Perhaps it gives some idea of the obsession with concrete out here.

I'd be very grateful for critiques of these photos as this is one possibility for the sort of stuff I would contemplate submitting to exhibitions and galleries. (These are all from that one roll processed in England)



Water in the desert ... what could symbolise luxury more clearly?


And here is some of the Islamic-style architecture.


And this is what it's all about: hundreds and hundreds of $300,000 flats to sell to silly foreigners (who seem to have suddenly lost their appetite for such "luxury")

[fish4570]

Well, I like them all, especially the water one. Do you have desert-ish photos to bounce off the luxury ones?
Also I spied a piece of lint in 1, 3 and 4.
One thing on tonality: my eyes tell me there must be blacker shadows, but my brain does not know anything about Qatary light ...

[PaulC]

Damn! I thought I'd got all the lint on 1, 2 and 3. Four is pretty much out of the scanner I didn't put any effort into it.

The camera exposure was designed to keep detail in the shadows (that's what the renowned Ansell Adams recommends) and I probably flattened them further when I was scanning, because I don't want detail being swallowed up in black.

Of course, out here the shadows are extremely hard but on this day I was lucky that there was a bit of high cloud (it's cloud, not an exposure problem in the sky of the abstract) to soften things. The water one is actually the only one in which there are any areas that are completely black at the back, right.

[fish4570]

Well, my eyes are stupid. I tilted my screen just a bit and got just what I needed out of the tonality and composition. Very nicely done ...

[fish4570]

The range of delicate tones in No. 3's tower is exquisite ...

[PaulC]

Thanks. I do wish I had a darkroom, chemicals and paper to do it all properly.

PS: You should be able to make out the tones (and the lint, lol!) in the handle of the torch. The torch was the key to that image and I took care not to under-expose it so far that the detail vanished. To me, it symbolises a country that is trying to be a little America (that was when The Pearl was designed, today I hear America is out of fashion and they want to be little Britain. Watch out for the appearance of the Big Ben clock tower ,,, and "the only gay in the village" for those familiar with Little Britain)

[fish4570]

[PaulC]

Might be a struggle to find a village in Qatar where it is possible to be the only gay, though

[mo]

Are there any people in these concrete jungles?or are they all in the little villages or the old part of town?
Visually stunning...I like the lines,and it comes across as so empty....is that what you were aiming for?

[PaulC]

I wasn't really aiming for empty but it really does seem to be empty. The place has only just been built - there are something like 16 towers in the first section and half of them aren't finished yet. How many of the others are occupied I don't know. The whole project seems to be a bit of a bubble. When it was announced, rich Qataris bought whole towers - of course, they didn't have to pay anything much because the towers didn't exist. Then they sold bits of the towers off to other people for a profit, because this was going to be the place to live so obviously you could buy it cheap off plan and then rent it at an enormous profit.

Two or three layers of middle-men seem to have got rich before the unbuilt/part-built/unfinished flats ended up in the hands of westerners who were lent the cash by the local banks. Then, of course, the trouble began. The places weren't finished on time, but the banks made the final payment to the (Qatari) contractors anyway, and started charging for the full loan. The rental bubble popped, the provision of services turned out to be an unexpected extra charge (about $50,000 or so per flat, if I remember correctly, because Dubai went bust and the Dubai based air-conditioning company had to get money from somewhere), and as people weren't willing to pay $8,000 a month in rent the owners found themselves either having to hold out and hope someone would come along who was desperate to move in, or else they had to cut their loses, rent for less and probably fund part of the mortgage/loan out of their own pockets.

A few people bought them to live in, which would have been OK if they had been finished on time, but they ended up having to carry on paying rent to their landlord for a year or two, while simultaneously paying a huge mortgage on an unfinished flat.

So its all a bit of a mirage, really. Except for the money that got transferred from the expats to the Qataris and the local banks. That was real.

[mo]

Ouch!!...same across the world then,when it comes to housing/building! Good to photograph.... maybe that's who they should appeal to next...

[PaulC]

I think it is always a bad move to buy into ghettos put up for foreigners, however glitzy they are. When the going gets rough, who is it who gets screwed the hardest? You mark yourself out as a target. Our house in Crete is 150 years old, and in the middle of a village where people live all year, so we get the same services and rules as the ancient couple living next door. British friends in a "greek paradise" development some distance away discovered that when almost all the foreigners had gone home for winter a bunch of crooks dropped by and raided the houses for white goods. The water supply could be erratic (no skin off the town council's nose, really) and it turned out that the government had various taxes targeted at the sorts of things only foreigners or very wealthy Greeks have, like swimming pools, property being outside the village area etc.

[mo]

Thanks for the insight into what foreigners have to go through living abroad,when you watch all the lifestyle shows it only shows half the truth!
Is it possible to show the contrast between the new "ghettos" and the normal dwellings? I am guessing these Ghettos are next to 1)the desert or 2)a normal town?

[Attila]

I like a bit more stronger tonality like last one, I did modify first one to present what I mean.

#1 genuine


#2 modified

[PaulC]

It's a question of preference. I don't want the sky washed out and I do want to retain detail in the torch (when I took it I considered that torch to be essential to the composition). But people have got very used to seeing high contrast stuff and most seem to prefer it that way.