Dubai resident captures Expo lake pattern in the desert via drone photography

The UAE’s Instagram community woke up to a stunning image by Uliana Shepotynnyk (@theulianas) on Sunday, February 23. The photography enthusiast and cabin crew member for FlyDubai posted an aerial shot of the words “Expo 2020” emblazoned on a sandy circlet, itself surrounded by a lake shaped such as a many-petalled flower, resembling the Expo 2020 Dubai logo.

The Expo “island” is further surrounded by a swathe of desert, with the Burj Khalifa and the Dubai skyline noticeable in the length. That’s one’s first impression, anyway.

In most cases, Shepotynnyk looked out for the signage she first saw on someone’s phone camera and thought “was a fake”, and found it at Al Qudra Lakes in Dubai - rather a distance from her first recce around the Expo 2020 site, which is nearer to Jebel Ali.

The sign is rendered “in some type of grass”, she says. “I used a drone to take the aerial shot and used a straightforward editing filter. The one thing ‘not real’ about the image, since it were, will be the buildings in the background. I Photoshopped these on as I wanted people to know that was in Dubai, and share it especially with those who don’t live here and may well not know about the Expo, or who are enthusiastic about knowing more,” she says.

The 30-year-old, who's at first from Ukraine, reckons that the sign could be noticeable to airborne passengers landing into Dubai, although she's no idea whose set up the sign. The official Expo 2020 Dubai media team says it’s not been created by them, either.