Photographer & videographer in Abu Dhabi

Dubai is mostly public space with private rules at the door; Abu Dhabi is the other way round. Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque, Qasr Al Watan and the Louvre all welcome personal photography and all require prior approval for professional or commercial work, and the mosque adds a dress code that is enforced at the entrance, not suggested. A session here is planned venue by venue: what is allowed, what needs a letter, and what is simply easier outside the walls. The outsides are often the better photograph anyway — the mosque’s reflecting pools at blue hour are open to every visitor.

The city is also the place in the region where two foreign tourists can marry. The Abu Dhabi Judicial Department’s Civil Family Court registers civil marriages for non-Muslim couples with no residency requirement, and an express ceremony can be booked for a set date and time. The ceremony itself is short; the photographs that matter are usually made afterwards, on the Corniche or on Saadiyat beach, in the same afternoon. Saadiyat and Yas are where most visitors stay — twenty to thirty minutes from the centre by car, and in opposite directions.