Cairo

My friend Mohammed organised me a driver, a buddy of his called Islam. It was a great arrangement.  Everyone will tell you Cairo is more than hectic, it is chaotic. The traffic is insane and you have to be purebred Egyptian to get anywhere through it, which Islam did with ease, he was amused that I didn’t want to go to the Pyramids but did want to go to the local Thursday market and the back streets. I did make it to the smaller Step Pyramids of Djoser tho.

The back streets were great, narrow, busy, good folk making and selling their wares on the roadside while cars tried to manoeuvre around them, small fires for cooking or welding and just activity and industry everywhere.

I didn’t get my best results here, the colours aren’t quite right and I was struggling for focus in the haze at times. I wa sseriously starting to get annoyed with my D80 and the all in one Nikon 18-200 didn't feel sharp. As Ken Rockwell says, focus is down to the photographer and not the camera.....but as every golfer knows, if you game ain't right then it's time for a new set of clubs.

Saudi Flowers 1

I had bought the Nikon VR105 awhile back to try macro work, so it was time to do some flowers.  The light in my garden is very good. It’s filtered by tonnes of sand in the air  that we breath as well as the tree’s, well actually weeds, but I made the gardener let them grow anyway and they looked great. With the sun shining on the tree’s as it went down into the desert I was able to get some great colourful and abstract backgrounds and play with rays breaking through the foliage.

This was the start of something good................