Medinet Habu

Over the next week or so I want to take you on a photographic tour of the Middle East.  In 2002 I joined the Royal Photographic Society and submitted 10 photographs to be assessed for an LRPS distinction.  (Licentateship of the Royal Photographic Society).  The first of those images is this one.

The place is Medinet Habu – the mortuary temple of Rameses III.  It has some of the best painted columns surviving in Egypt.  For the photographers viewing this diary – the day the photograph was taken was a very dull and overcast day, which meant the bright areas between the columns weren’t ‘burnt out’ as they would normally be. 

When I was taking the photo I waited ages for the two people you can see to ‘get out of my shot’ – in the end I go fed up of waiting and took the picture anyhow.  When I saw the result a couple of weeks later (this was in my pre-digital days) I was really pleased the people were there – it showed the scale of the location.  I learned an important photographic lesson that day – when something is big you need something small in the shot so that you know just how big it really is.