Photography in Egypt

I've always been interested in photography, drawing and painting, but never thought that I had any talent at it. Additionally, before digital cameras, photography was a pretty expensive hobby. Once I had children, of course, the rules changed. When you are taking pictures of your family, no one expects you to have any skill...this is straight documentation...so worries about abilities fall by the wayside. When we moved to Alexandria, I fell in love with the city where the light changed so much during the day, the buildings were ornate and often guarded by beautiful wrought iron gates and old wooden doors. I found, as many others have, that Egypt is so rich visually that it is almost impossible NOT to become involved in photography. I began taking photographs of almost everyone and anything...especially once I got my first digital camera and could just go straight from camera to computer.

Then, of course, I learned about the joys of computer crashes and backing up your photos. I can't count the number of photos that I've lost over the years. I try to be more careful but it isn't all that easy.  When I started blogging, adding photos to the blog was complicated. Once Blogger changed its ways of working and we could add them easily, I was in heaven. It's one thing to write about a place that other people can only imagine, but to add images to your words really enriches the experience.

After I'd been writing Living In Egypt for a number of years, I was contacted by someone from the Daily Photo network to see if I'd like to do a daily photo from here. The idea of publishing a photo a day was rather daunting, but in my usual fashion, I decided it sounded like fun and I dove in. Posting a photo a day is work, no doubt. I have to make sure that I have enough photos, which pushes me to remember my camera every time I leave the house.

An interesting development has been the fact that my longtime driver/personal assistant/Man Friday Mohamed has also taken an interest in photography and is proving to have a very fine eye for an unusual shot. I get a real kick out of seeing what he's filled the other little digital with when we come back from trips to the city. We have a small collection of relatively inexpensive digital cameras at the farm and they come in handy as well when we have field trips with some of the staff or village children. Cairo and Giza through fresh eyes are pretty interesting. Now most of my visitors are leaving Egypt with cds full of photos...often numbering in the thousands.

I hope that you enjoy my photos. I try to take pictures of things that will only be seen in Egypt, that somehow tell a story about this country that I love so much and enjoy sharing.