If you’re just now joining me, I’m in Egypt this week.
“Egypt!?!? You’re crazy! It’s so unsafe there!”
It couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve been all over the world, including six Middle Eastern countries, and I feel more unsafe and threatened in Little Rock or Chicago than Egypt. There’s just no other way to say it.
But let’s not get into that yet… first, a few images.
It was a lovely morning…
(These cranes are building the new Egyptian Antiquities museum, btw.)
We dove into the city early. Straight into traffic.
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I naturally tend toward black and white photography. Any regular viewer of this blog will know that there are loads of posts that are solid black and white.
But this Leica has a certain feel to the color. It’s that Kodachrome balance.
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Approaching Tahrir Square…
Now, I wander the cities in which I visit quite a bit. In Haiti, I’ve photographed a demonstration in Port-au-Prince from the ground, walked Vine St. in Cincinnati, and flown on a CubanAir jet. There’s a certain feeling of general “uneasiness” or a sense of being out of control of the situation of which I am not completely foreign.
I had coffee from a street vendor sitting in plastic chairs in the median of Tahrir Square. I never once felt unsafe, threatened, or remotely uneasy at any point.
In fact, the greatest threat to my safety was the rather brittle plastic chairs we sat on. The leg of my travel companion’s chair gave way, spilling him… and no less than 7 or 8 Egyptians came running over to help him up, make sure he was okay, and brush off his shirt.
It is absurd to think that Egypt is any more unsafe than any other big city… including and especially in the United States.
So there’s that… moving on.
The Pyramids.
This is my second trip to Egypt. And because this is generally a scouting trip for the university, our time at the Pyramids was a little briefer than it was before.
Our Egyptian friend is an Egyptologist and we certainly have never been lacking information anywhere we go.
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Tourism is down because of all the fear being promoted in the media these days. But there are certainly still tourists… everywhere.
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There’s that great filmy feel again. It was a bit hazy today which may have contributed to it, but I love it anyway.
We drove out to Memphis…
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I wanted a rug. So I got one. After they make it, it’ll arrive in 5 months or so.
The view out the back door of the rug shop.
Late evening, we headed back to Cairo and had dinner with our friend Osmon and his wife. A spectacular way to end a spectacular day.
One of the best in a while, I guess…
Stay tuned…
-Noah D.
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Other photographer friends posting a photo a day for 2013:
Jeff Montgomery
Mike James
Ashel Parsons
