introduction

The Sharjah: Gateway to the Trucial States World Heritage nomination seeks to gain UNESCO World Heritage listing for eight historic sites within the Emirate of Sharjah, including Al Mahatta Airport. To support this nomination Barker Langham is creating an Interpretation Centre and content, which communicates the importance of these sites in the development of Sharjah, the wider UAE, and globally, to a variety of audiences.

Barker Langham is creating a multi-sensory Interpretation Centre, designed to meet the needs of a variety of audiences. The centre will convey the impact of the eight historic sites within the context of the Emirate, the Trucial States, the UAE, and Internationally. The locations will also have interpretation panels installed on-site, to further communicate their historic significance.

The results of the ongoing work will be open to the public in 2018 in the form of the free-to-enter Interpretation Centre in the Heart of Sharjah. Visitors will engage with a variety of multi-sensory experiences, and from this encounter will be encouraged to visit and discover the eight historic sites.

Scope of Work

To capture this unique museum setup within renovated heritage buildings.

Challenges

Some of the rooms had highly reflective mirrored glass installed and hidden LED Screens, backlit frames, changing animation via projection on architecture models and many more features which are surrounded with dimly room lighting and plenty of daylight flooding through the main door makes this installation a perfect example for HDR photography.

Some of the interactive elements can not be captured in one shot and require a series of photos to showcase its purpose. Only with exposure bracketing and therefore ultimately increasing the dynamic range it is possible to tame such a high contrast scene.

The heritage styled rooms are really narrow and the full width room images permit rather limited positioning of the camera and tripod in order not to be seen of course.