Behind the scenes: Celebrity portraits at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival
The Abu Dhabi Film Festival was October 14-23. I’ve already posted about live web-casting the festival’s opening and closing ceremonies, but that’s not all we were up to that week! During the days in between, I was able to shadow photographer Fabrice Dall’Anese, the festival’s official portrait photographer, as he and his crew created images [...]
Portrait of an artist
Masood Parvez has been sketching portraits of the leaders of the UAE for many years. A large collection of his work, 85 sepia-colored pencil drawings, is now on display in an exhibition called “Faces of Leadership” at the Ministry of Culture in Abu Dhabi. In the weeks leading up to the opening of the exhibition, [...]
Webcasting the Abu Dhabi Film Festival
The fourth annual Abu Dhabi Film Festival (previously known as the Middle East International Film Festival) took place this past week from October 14-23. A month before the film festival began, the deputy director of the festival approached The National with the idea to webcast the festival’s opening and closing ceremonies. Usually the rights to the [...]
The art of Abu Dhabi parking
Searching for a space Another Istabsir video! During the last week of Ramadan, The National’s photo editor took a photo on his iPhone of the parking situation that was below his apartment window. Parking lots in the “tourist club” neighborhood of Abu Dhabi have always been a mess, but this particular scene was spectacularly chaotic. [...]
The National has a new website! (I have broken links)
After many months of preparation, we’ve recently relaunched our website at The National. (New site!) Things are still a bit sticky on the new site, but everyone’s working hard to make it work. In the meantime, one unfortunate side effect of the transition to the new content management system is that all of the links on [...]
Gagosian’s contemporary masterpieces on display at Saadiyat
Last year, the Manarat Al Saadiyat gallery on Saadiyat Island held it’s first show with Disorientation II, an exhibition that featured the work of several Arab artists. For it’s second show, the gallery is displaying pieces from the large contemporary art collection of Larry Gagosian. This is the first time that Mr. Gagosian’s collection has [...]
Preserving the nation’s lullabies
Dr. Aisha Bilkhair works with the National Center for Documentation and Research in Abu Dhabi. One of our reporters interviewed her for an article about the importance of preserving the UAE’s oral history, particularly lullabies. We decided to do a quick video about her as well in order to use the nice recordings of lullabies [...]
An iftar for everyone
Ramadan just ended last week, and the Eid ul-Fitr holidays are now over, but we were able to slip one last Ramadan video in at the last moment! Free iftar meals have been served at the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque every Ramadan since Sheikh Zayed died in 2004. Last year, The National’s magazine, M, did an [...]
Radwan al Hosani and the chocolate factory
It’s now Ramadan, so all of the reporters are working on Ramadan related stories. One of the stories that came up is about how chocolate and other sweets are one of the most popular gifts to give during Ramadan and Eid. The reporter’s story focused on an Abu Dhabi based company called Fuala. The reporter [...]
Ramadan lights up the corniche
This was a quick-hit Istabsir to use as a place holder during Ramadan. The Istabsir page has been pulled for the month and will be replaced by a cool series of Ramadan photo essays that the photographers have been working on. But in the meantime, the online version of Istabsir will be a bit stagnant, [...]
Sparky’s play zone
Sparky’s play zone: Shopping can be child’s play. Another Istabsir! This one actually ran on July 11, 2010. Indoor play zones are a big deal in the UAE. Every mall I’ve been to, including malls in small towns in the middle of what seems to be nowhere, have crowded children’s play zones. It gets so hot, [...]
Live webcasting from Industry Insights
On July 4, 2010, The National hosted its first Industry Insights forum. Media leaders from around the Middle East and the world were invited to discuss the future of TV revenues. This was to be the first in a series of forums, all hosted by reporters from The National, about relevant topics in business in [...]
The people on the bus go…
Journey to Liwa Another Istabsir! (Still working on that new website most days). For this Istabsir, we decided to take a bus as far into the desert as we could get. As a journalist here, I drive my (rental) car everywhere. It’s pretty safe to say that most western expatriates also stick to their own [...]
Let the cranes begin
Ever-present but hardly noticed. Another video for the Istabsir series. (http://thenational.ae/istabsir) This time we focused on the cranes that litter the skyline of Abu Dhabi. We try not to use music for the Istabsir videos, but the video was a bit boring with nothing driving it. So the audio you hear is a bit of [...]
Women to watch
The National’s M magazine profiled 10 successful, ambitious and stereotype-breaking Arab women for an article called “Women to Watch.” I was asked to do some short videos with three of the women who agreed to be interviewed in front of the camera. Here, Elham al Qasimi, the first Arab woman to travel across the Arctic ice [...]
Riding the waves
“Riding the waves” is an installment in The National’s weekly photo essay and video series, Istabsir. For this week, we featured the jet-skis that are always riding around Abu Dhabi’s breakwater. The breakwater keeps the large waves of the gulf away from the calm shores of Abu Dhabi’s coastline, but it is also the place where [...]
From the top of Jebel Hafeet
“From the top of Jebel Hafeet: A sense of serenity” is an installment in The National’s weekly photo essay and video series, Istabsir. This week featured an evening on Jebel Hafeet, the second tallest mountain in the UAE. All of the guide books for the UAE say that you have to visit Jebel Hafeet, and [...]
Five fingers, one fist
This is an installment in The National’s weekly photo essay and video series called Istabsir. The Arabic word Istabsir roughly translates as “to attentively reflect on and contemplate with respectful consideration.” Every week, the essay focuses on one small aspect of UAE life by dropping the viewer into a new place. This week featured a [...]
Man City players coach youths at football camp
The Manchester City Football Club was bought by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed of Abu Dhabi in 2008, and as a result, Abu Dhabi now has an interest in this particular English Premier League team. So when players from the team come to town, it’s a story. Recently, a three-day-long Manchester City football camp at Emirates Palace [...]
What makes a top fuel dragster
This interactive was built as a sort of preview for the Yas Marina Circuit Drag Racing Festival that took place in Abu Dhabi on March 19-20, 2010. The PR company for the event would not allow us to film anything on the day of the event, or to talk to any of the participants before [...]
Chatting with the co-chairs
Abu Dhabi hosted a gathering of global media leaders for the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, at the Yas Hotel, from March 9 to 11, 2010. Three co-chairs of the Abu Dhabi 2010 Media Summit, Kishore Lulla, Groupe Executive Chairman of Eros International; Maurice Levy, Chairman and CEO of Publicis Groupe; and Dr. Kai Fu-Lee, Chairman and [...]
The National video reel
As The National is nearing it’s two-year anniversary, and we getting ready to relaunch our website, I was asked to edit a video reel of the best of the last two years of The National’s multimedia. Included is footage from video stories by me, Galen Clarke and Razan Alzayani.
Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge
The Abu Dhabi Adventure Challenge is a six-day race through the water, sand and mountains of the UAE. I was able to follow the race for a few days and do recaps of the events. This interactive was build to house those daily video recaps and photo galleries, as well as an interactive map that [...]
