This is the view from the top of the spectacular Marina Bay Sands Hotel in Singapore. This particular viewpoint looks out over the Gardens by the Bay nature park, which covers approximately 250 acres. From this view, you can particularly appreciate the wonderfully designed and other-worldly, Gardens by the Bay Building, which houses a wide variety of plants. You can also appreciate the scale and span of the Supertree Grove, which becomes even more prominent when lit up at night.

Photography Tips

Capturing this particular image was especially challenging mainly down to how busy the viewing platform was. Taking this image handheld was the only practical option at the time and I felt using a tripod would probably be a nuisance to the other people enjoying the view.

I would suggest utilising Google’s ‘popular times’ feature to see when it really gets busy. For me, I found it was a little quieter just after sunset, which allowed me to get a nice blue hour shot whilst using a tripod.

Another thing to consider is the ‘viewing glass’ which adds to the complexity. Luckily there is a small gap between the panels of glass in which you can place your lens through. Although positioning your tripod to facilitate this can be quite frustrating.

Editing the image was, you guessed it, pretty challenging as well. The challenge was that, unfortunately during my visit, there was lingering smog in the air which had blown over from Indonesia following illegal forrest fires there. As a result, I had to heavily rely on Lightroom’s ‘dehaze’ feature to cut through this smog to provide a clearer view of the scene.