Early Morning Pictures And The Early Bird Photo Challenge

This week’s Friday photo challenge is named early bird. And God knows I’m an early bird. Yet, I have very few sunrise photos. So my selection for the challenge ended up being rather easy. No.1 is an HDR shot of the morning sun taken right from our breakfast table in the Pyrenees. I was dipping my toasts in coffee (a local tradition) when I spotted that light and decided to interrupt my early morning meal and take a picture. That’s all I could find in my recent digital photography portfolio. Yet, thinking a bit and digging into my memories I could think of a really, really early bird experience I’m bound never to forget.

That was way back in 1990. I was touring Egypt with friends and if you can remember, December 1990 was the time when the first Gulf War started spreading out. A few weeks later and our trip would not have been possible. We cycled, rode horses, hiked in the mountains and even slept rough in the desert of Egypt below Aswan at a time when precisely, the country was entirely deserted. We were able to visit Luxor and Karnak and there were only the 6 of us there! At the end of our trip, we visited Cairo. And obviously we wanted to see the Pyramids. With a couple of Swiss friends we woke up very early on that day, swallowed a cup of Egyptian Cardamom-flavoured coffee, jumped in a cab and found ourselves in front of the closed gates of Gizeh in the wee small hours of the morning. A few Egyptian pounds later and we were in with our cameras, waiting for the sun to rise behind the Pyramids. I had my Canon AE1-Program at the ready and shot a series of pictures, some of which were very successful. All I could salvage from my various trips and losses were these 2 pictures, which I scanned with my computer and ever so slightly processed through Lightroom.

Many thanks to the guys at the Friday photo challenge for giving me the opportunity to reminisce about this beautiful moment and ensure that its capture won’t be mislaid.