Crash: an Abu Dhabi Photo Story

the other day a guy opened his door into my car and made minor scratch on the rear door and wheel hub. he was a being a dick about it so I followed procedure and had the traffic police come decide whether or not he had to pay. cop comes and automatically tells the guy that he was at fault, and that it was his responsibility to pay. I found out from accident report that he is one wealthy motherfucker (son of AD mercedes dealership owner). take the accident report to my insurance to open a claim. have all the correct documents so all's good.. take the claim/referral to mussafah - the 'industrial zone' of abu dhabi, located about 35 km south, deep in the desert. finally found the garage I was destined for and parked. this is when things began to get weird. I found the guy that was handling referrals, surrounded by a group of other guys. he knew I was coming so he quickly grabbed my claim and went to survey the (minor) damage to my car. I understood that he was assessing the damage, but what were all these other guys doing? I decided to document this strange situation and they very quickly caught on to the fact that I was shooting away.. by now I'm beginning to realize that the extended group, all with clipboards of their own are delegates from different body shops in the area, taking relevant details so that they can then provide quotes to the insurance company. they thought the 'foreigner taking pictures' was kinda funny so I kept shooting. they were done with my car in about 2 minutes. I was handed back my insurance referral and told that I would be contacted about how and when the damage to my car would be fixed. by this stage a couple of them were encouraging me to follow and shoot some more so.. I did! driving in AD, especially in a smaller car, you are regularly subject to aggressive 'vehicular' bullying, and sometimes it doesn't always end well. it was a total spin to spend 15 mins in a place where there was so much road carnage, but the last couple of pics.. really sent it home. tl;dr: if you scratch someone's car don't be a dick, and drive safe..

The tin can pyramid in the centre of the desert..

About an hours drive outside of AD city lies the Emirates National Auto Museum. It kind of snuck up on us in the form of a big old dusty jet plane and a corrugated iron pyramid, stuck out in the middle of nowhere and looking quite odd. Needless to say that this bizarre set of seemingly random structures, stuck halfway between the Grand Mosque and Liwa, inspired us to stop and have a look around!



The first thing we unavoidably noticed as we got closer was the massively over-sized four wheel drive restaurant poking out over the fence.









Upon entering the car park we were greeted by the massive tin shed-pyramid and very possibly the strangest looking caravan we'd ever seen.









Unfortunately the museum was closed for renovations, but I managed to slip around the corner and take a walk around the heritage village thingy.

Desertttttttttttttttt....

A trip into the desert on a 'Desert Safari' is kind of like going to see a bad movie for all the wrong reasons, it's a little interesting at first but by the time you reach the second act, you know exactly how it will end and start covertly looking at your watch.

Firstly there's the random dude riding a camel.



Then there's the obligatory visit to the camel farm..







Where you may make some interestingly shaped friends..





Not all of them being camels..



And you realize that after a while you're probably shooting way too much camel pRon..





And that even the most gorgeous Brazillian models can make asses of themselves..



You realize that not having used the DSLR for a while has seriously compromised your ability to shoot in unfamiliar (and ever changing) light..







And that happiness can be captured in little more than a smile..