The Peopling of Abydos Part II

Went to Dandara today, got some nice stuff, for now though ill throw up some more people shots before bed.

Greg the photographer I work with,.  Hes younger than me and pretty badass even though he mumbles constantly.  Great guy though, and I'm glad to be working w/ him.

Amanda smoking on party night...even though she will claim up and down that she doesn't.  Greg was all belligerent at this point insisting that this photo wouldn't work...HA!

The funny thing about Ægypt is how excited random people on the street are to have thier picture taken by complete stangers w/ no possiblity of getting a print.  thank god for the digital age at least so they can see it on the camera.  This was taken in Balianna when we went to visit the fabric shop before the tailor came to the house to measure us, these kids were just across the street insisting we take pics of them.  I let of a string of like 7 high speed shots and this one was the last, my absolute favorite though b/c of the kid on the right side of the frame moving.

Temples Part 1

Last week or so we visited Seti temple here in Abydos.  was pretty sweet and I tried a lot of low light stuff, which didn't really work too hot since I didn't have a tripod.  Curiously enough, there was definite info on the image on camera, but when I got to the computer, there wasn't enough on many images to pull from.  Today we are heading out to see the temple at Dendara, maybe that will go better.... By the way, let me know if these are too dark to really see.

The Peopling of Abydos Part 1

So turns out the internet here is intermittently shitty ("Welcome in Egypt") so I dont get to even post stuff when I have it.  things are moving along though.  tired right now, so I won't bother typing a description for each image (maybe I'll add them later), suffice it to say that I'm working more on developing my self in the direction of actually photographing people, not to mention "peopling" the landscape that I have shown and will continue to show over the next weeks.

Finally, an update

So updating this every 2-3 days might have been a little bit of a stretch.  Today was the first day of fieldwork and if today and the preceding 3 are any indication every 3-4 days is probably more realistic...oh well, on with the stuff:

The following 3 photos are more from the Khan Al-Khalili


This one is of a room leading to the upstairs apartment above a shop w/ some pushy guys running it.  The contrast between the window and the darkened interior was a challenge, but I figured I'd give it a shot anyway.

A door in the bazaar.

2 guys in the bazaar.  Im proud of myself for doing candids, especially in a country where I am paranoid about being yelled at for it.

In Abydos at the village site.  Its really neat, its the last corner where the old village still exists, its a profile of the tel and it stands about 10m high, and thats only what shows above the surface.

There are kitties here so I don't have to go cold-turkey.  this one is the momma cat, her name is "Killer".  More of her to come, trust me...

So I have finally reached Abydos (pronounced A-Be-Dose, dont remember who I was arguing about the pronunciation with but you were right) and now I actually get to post the photos I worked on in Cairo.  We ended up being there for about 3 days, but internet at the hotel was expensive and bandwidth limited so uploading wasn't really possible.  That being said, here we go...

2 guys on the bridge when coming in from the airport.  I dont think the one on the back was too happy about me shooting him.

Police officer during the drive to the hotel.

Heiroglyphs on a false door at the site of Saqqara.  this is the spot at which the cult would make offerings for the ded person after they had been entombed.

Random panel at Saqqara.

My roommate Seth looking a bit colonial.

The "red" pyramid at Dashur.  It is the first "real" pyramid built for Kufu's father.  Kufu is the pharaoh who erected the great pyramid at Giza.

The meter inside the cab on the way back to the hotel from Dashur.  The cab-driver was a first class jackass; we agreed on a price for the whole day and then when we got back he demanded 100LE more because we "took too long".  Apparently the phrase "Whole day" is a relative term with no connection to the position of the sun in the sky.  All in all though, this is my favorite photo of that whole day.

Hah!  more object photography!  A lock I found in a junk shop at the Khan Al-Khalili Bazaar.

Finally

Took me awhile to work up the motivation to clean my studio up enough to create the apparatus for this one but here it finally is...

The hardest part was getting the dowel part of the rig to stick to the back of the mask, other than that it went fairly smoothly though once again the background had to be dropped into B&W to control for the funky-ass colors that plague all my object photography...maybe its time I get off my ass and get some real lights instead of goose-necks and CFL's...hmmmm....

By the way, here's a pic of how I made the magic happen, kinda kills the mystery I know, but it just goes to show that you can do some pretty sweet stuff even w/ a ghetto rig...



Next picture I promise will be something other than object photography...maybe...

A new marker and testing my first watermark...

This one serves a dual purpose, Just finished putting my new marker together and I wanted to show it off, but I also wanted to test making my first watermark, as its generally not a good idea to put your stuff on the internetz w/ no safeguards...I like it though, its simple and gets the point across, any suggestions?  smaller font or more transparency perhaps?


as far as the marker goes, I do like it, though im not usually a fan of colors in general, much less on my paintball markers (blue is a little hard to hide in the woods) and I will be trading for black parts if at all possible...but for the purposes of photography I think the blue really makes this image.