Camels in the Sand

This is one of those pictures I have planned to blog for months, but just never got round to making the decision to do it (I think?!). The other night I was going through some of my pictures with my wife, and she commented that she loves this picture, so then I realised the time was right to show it.

It's not the most obvious place to take a picture, on top of a camel, but how else would you get this angle? It was totally spur of the moment, as we were getting a guided camel ride throughout the Sinai desert in Egypt. Even with a VR lens, many of the pictures I took on the camel journey were very shaky and blurry, but luckily this one I took of the shadows in the sand came out fine. This was processed entirely in Adobe Lightroom.

The Crazy Firestarter from Egypt

There were many crazy sights to see whilst in Egypt earlier this year, but this nights entertainment, was perhaps the craziest. This guy literally put my life at risk. Ok so it was all really a bit of 'fun', being nominated to join him on stage and have him fling fire all around me, but I would be suspicious of any kid who says when they grow up, they want to play with fire.

So after he had nearly singed all my hair off, I nevertheless decided to try get some good action shots, in the low light. This whole evening of 'fun' took place in the desert after some camel-riding, and did have a very authentic Egyptian feel to the show. Which I have tried to incorporate within this picture. I have heard an old saying that says that photographs are more interesting with the people element, which works against me somewhat, as I am not a people photographer. I like landscapes and buildings primarily, but I am always keen to incorporate the human element when it adds to the scene.

This guy clearly goes to the gym more than I have recently, and it was good to do some post-processing based on bringing out the detail and tone of his body, in a style I enjoy, but am not very used to employing. I kept the background within the picture as well, as I thought it added an Egyptian night club feel to it (even though this was outside). The last thing to do was to try and eliminate as much noise as possible (this was taken in low light with a D90), though not too much that would lose the atmosphere, and make it look smooth.

Christmas is literally just round the corner now, and though I don't have any new festive pictures to offer this year, I will use Sunday to post a collection of winter shots, I have previously posted in the past. See you then!

Desert Camp Egypt

Well I have returned from an extraordinary week in Egypt, full of sunshine, snorkelling and plenty of travelling. I'm not the type on holiday to just sit by the pool, though there was a little bit of that. Unfortunately, a week in the sun can go oh so quickly, but we managed to pack quite a lot into that week. The most interesting part was travelling to Israel and Palestine, to visit The Holy Cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem (not sure that is a city?), as well as a stop at the Dead Sea. So as you can imagine I have I hope plenty of photos to share, and rather than give you a whole transcript of the holiday right now, I will take each stage one at a time.

Today's picture was actually taken the day before we returned from holiday. After the exhausting trip to Israel and Palestine, we relaxed for a couple of days, but wanted to do a final excursion before returning to England. So we decided to do Camel Riding and Star Gazing in the desert. We had booked the trip through a vendor based outside the hotel and it began rather nervously, when we were collected from the hotel, by 3 men in what can only be described as a makeshift Derek Trotter minibus (blue not yellow though), complete with no ID and plenty of arabic writing inside. Having arrived at the desert and satisfied that we weren't being kidnapped, we did indeed enjoy a great evening of the previously mentioned activities, and also learned about the Bedouin (Egyptian Tribesman) lifestyle, as well as being entertained with various dances as well. So no this is not a camp in the military sense, but still a place you could easily enjoy the peace and quiet of the desert for the night. We were able to watch the sun going down from a good vantage point, and it was at this time that this photo was taken. It is a 3 shot HDR image, taken handheld with my Nikon D90.

I have been using the D90 a lot recently (for my Miami and Egypt trips), as opposed to the much bigger and better D700, simply because of the ease of travelling with it. I never planned to go back into shooting with the D90, and indeed it can be frustrating having to deal with issues again that are not a problem with the D700, such as low level light handling, and the amount of noise the D90 generates. Still, it is light, portable and has a VR (the anti-shaky thing) lens, as opposed to my 24-70mm lens I have for my D700, which is not. I look forward though now to going back to using the D700 on a regular basis, and with Spring approaching soon hopefully, will certainly be out and about getting some 'Home' pictures.