Cairo in Motion

In February 2015 (yes, I'm just getting around to editing the photos) my husband and I took a weekend trip to Cairo. The city was incredibly striking, and the mosques very different from what I had imagined, my main experience with mosques being based on Istanbul. The colors of the city were very earthy, particularly in the golden evening sun, the mosques looked almost as if they were constructed from sun-baked clay.

For the bulk of our trip, we ended up hiring a private car with a driver for several reasons: many of the areas are not very walkable, the distance between sights can be quite lengthy, we had a very limited time and long list of sights to see, and private car hire is remarkably affordable. The great thing about this approach is we were able to see quite a bit of the city. The downside is that much of it was in the form of landscapes passing by at high speed. But, of course, the joy of digital is that you can experiment a bit with no real associated costs (I'm looking at you, film!). So, I pressed my camera against the glass of the car, and, when feeling especially bold, I even secured my wrist strap and took some shots with the windows rolled down. As you might imagine, I ended up with a lot of rubbish, like this photo with a lovely reflection of my fingers in the window:

But, in spite of some blurry foregrounds, I think several of the shots came out surprisingly well all things considered:

In addition to adventures by car, no cliched visit to Cairo would be complete without a trip around the Great Pyramids of Giza on the back of a camel. Suffice it to say, I've also acquired the (limited) ability to take photos whilst being jostled along on the back of a growling camel (and occasionally grasping the pommel of the saddle for dear life). Again, I ended up with lots of rubbish, but also got a few shots I think work:

For Your Eyes Only

Although I've been putting together a gallery of what I think are my best photographs, occasionally I come across a photograph that, much as I'd like to post it in my gallery, I cannot, either because the resolution is too low or because I don't have a property release to use an image of the building for commercial purposes.  However, there's nothing stopping me from sharing them on my blog, right?  So, without further adieu, below are a few of the images I can't sell, but I'd still like to share.  Hope you enjoy them.

This photograph shows the Michelangelo's  staircase in the Vatican--you walk down this staircase after leaving the Sistine Chapel.  Pictures of the Vatican can't be sold commercially, though, so this one is just for my enjoyment.  And maybe yours now, too?

Apparently both the Louvre and the pyramid in front of the Louvre (yes, the one made famous by the DaVinci Code) are also illegal to sell.  However, looking at them is, thankfully, perfectly legal.

This one was taken through one of the arches of the Colosseum in Rome.  This one isn't illegal too sell, but it's too small to make a print of a decent size and quality to be worth printing.