Having worked and lived in the UAE (United Arab Emirates) before, I was very familiar with the tower, having photographed it from the foundations up to the time of completion. New Year festivities have always eluded us before. We were either in South Africa or in Germany or travelling between.

This time however we made sure we booked our return fight from Germany so that we could be there in Dubai to capture this experience first hand. What a great joy if your plans just work out exactly the way they were planned!

The only hassle was the amount of traffic and the hundreds of thousands of pedestrians at the Dubai Mall where the tower is situated. We journeyed to and from the tower only to finally settle for a spot about 3.3 km from the tower for these shots.