Way Back - 16 Years Back...

Looking back at some of my very first digital photos. From a trip to Egypt over Christmas and New Year 2016/2017


Morning From Mt Sinai

On the Path, Down From Mt Sinai

In the "olden" days...

Ceiling of the Mosque of Mohamed Ali, Saladin's Citadel Cairo

When you came home from a vacation, you dropped the film canisters off at the local grocery store, or maybe a photo kiosk and got your 24 or 36 4x6" prints back anywhere from 1 hour to 1 week later. You brought them home, to the next extended family function, and maybe to the office to share.

Sunset, Hyatt Regency Na'ama Bay Sharm el Sheikh



People would thumb through with maybe some "oohs" or "aahs" thrown in. If you were an organized person, they get filed away or put into a little album labeled "Vacation 1996" or something. (if you were me, they got dumped in a box :)


The Sphinx and Pyramid, Giza



With the advent of digital cameras, the equivalent is coming home, downloading the photos to a computer, maybe emailing them to friends and family, posting on a blog or a photo share web site such as flickr, pbase, yahoo etc.

Sunrise, 30 December 2006, Mt. Sinai



In either case, not many people take the time to do much editing in the form of throwing out the boring, the out-of-focus, or incorrectly exposed photos. Only if one or a few photos were chosen for reprinting and "blown up" was any effort made. I was one that usually made the effort to cull the worst shots, the ones that look the same as the others before anyone thumbed through. So by the time people saw my photographs they saw only my better shots. Usually they saw less than 1/2 (sometimes much less) of what was taken. One result is that I have received a number of complimentary comments over the years along the lines of: "Your photos are really nice".


View of Cairo and Giza from Saladin's Citadel with the Pyramids in the Distance



First, I'd suggest that if you throw out the worst 50%, everyone's photos will look better. Second, this was the long way of saying I've finished going through our vacation photos. I ended up "messing with" 35 out of 289 that I took. People that got to see all 35 saw a mere 12.1% (less than 1/8) of what I shot...I sure hope they look good :) These were a few more of my favorites...

Mt Sinai Sunrise

Sunrise from Mt Sinai
Shelby on the Hike Down

While in Sharm el Sheikh, Shelby and I took an overnight tour that took us out in the desert of the Sinai to climb Mt Sinai and visit St Catherine's Monastery. Mt. Sinai (or Mt. Moses as it is called there) is the site where Moses received the 10 Commandments. St. Catherine Monastery (another UNESCO World Heritage site) is supposedly the oldest Christian monastery in the world and is said to sit on the site of the "Burning Bush" of old testament biblical fame.

We climbed Mt Sinai by flashlight. It was cold, I had the hiccups and felt terrible. The "hike" was about 7 kilometers (about 4.3 miles) one way with 750 "steps" at the top. The steps were covered in ice and snow, which was actually more of an issue on the way back down. I wore two t-shirts, a long sleeved shirt and a baggy sweater (which I loaned to Shelby most of the time). Shelby was better prepared for the cold, but I think she felt colder than I did. It was cold enough that when the nice scarf she had bought to wear inside St. Catherine Monastery got wet, I told her to wave it in the now risen sun...it froze into a solid sheet.

I'm not sure I would have gone if I realized ahead of time, how far it was, how cold it was, and how bad I would be feeling. Above are a couple of photos from our trek. Unfortunately, I didn't feel well enough on the way up to get good photos of the streams of people and their flashlights winding through the desert and up the mountain.

One of Those Memories...

We saw the pyramids in Egypt on our much needed holiday vacation. The tour guide did his best to keep me from getting the photos I wanted. Rushing me, not stopping the van at a critical moment, (we were private customers, it wasn't like I was holding up the group). I still managed to get a couple good shots, including this one of the smallest of the three Giza pyramids, Menkaure's Pyramid. A storm was brewing over Giza and Cairo in the distance while the sun going down in late afternoon behind us. My memory of the pyramids will always be flavored by the "helpful" guide. It makes me smile now, but I was grumpy at the time!