The growth of the UAE’s two big cities continues to intrigue outsiders, particularly those with cameras.

Some are more than tourists with camera-phones.

This has led to some impressive time-lapse photography of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and now we have a new addition to the canon — an English photographer’s “flow motion” rendering of a day in Dubai. (Scroll to the bottom of The National’s story to find the video, which can be expanded to fill your screen.)

The story above the video is handy in outlining what it was Rob Whitworth was after.

He is most proud of the sequence showing a plane landing, luggage being transported to a handling area, and then a particular piece being picked up inside the terminal. Several cameras, lots of editing.

As usual, Dubai is a visual stunner. All those enormous buildings in the middle of the desert. At times, it can seem so big as to be impersonal and off-putting, but it is never less than spectacular.

And Whitworth’s work is a bit different in that it seems to involve lots and lots and lots of editing. Note how people shuffle more than walk (cutting out the frames in which people are lifting their feet), and the addition, to the soundtrack, of a sort of snick-snick that conveys people moving, almost shuffling.

Also, the sense of a single long shot contributes to the concept of “flow motion”.

We have the typical shots in a mall, and the Burj Khalifa, and traffic in the city and, on water, over Dubai Creek.

This is the latest and perhaps most impressive of the genre.

During our stay here, a photographer named Beno Saradzic produced two time-lapse pieces.

The first, which came out in 2011, can be reached via link in this blog post. That’s all Abu Dhabi. And it is interesting, in watching it again, to note how many buildings have been added to the capital’s skyline in the four years since that video was released. I’m fairly sure the World Trade Centre, now the city’s biggest building, does not show up there.

The second Saradzic piece, which is about seven minutes, combined Abu Dhabi and Dubai, opening with the former and shifting to the latter about seven minutes in.

That one can be seen via the link on this blog post.

As long as the UAE’s Big Two cities continue to grow and put up strange and interesting buildings, we have to assume photographers and videographers will feel drawn to Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

I figure someone will add another video to the collection in about 18 months.