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.