A Scene from Long Ago

[AlanLichty]

While I was scrounging around for a good candidate image for the Salvage Saturday thread I found another image taken just after the shot of Khafre's Pyramid that looked interesting. Back in the mid 70's a lot of my photography as an aspiring grad student in archaeology was heavily focused on accumulating lecture slides so there are hundreds of slides in my collection that ranked low for artistic value. Every once in a while I took breaks from that vector and tried composing shots that were simply fun photography. In this case I was looking for interesting ways to frame scenes overlooking the monuments in Giza. This is one such scene showcasing the Sphinx, Khafre's tomb on the right and the top of Menkaure's Pyramid to the left of the Sphinx. This probably would have also been a good Salvage Saturday candidate given how much cleanup work was needed to make it presentable. Scanned from a Kodachrome 25 slide.

C&C always welcome.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Nice view of the area we don't see much of. Nice work on the cleanup.

 

[AlanLichty]

Nice view of the area we don't see much of. Nice work on the cleanup.

Thanks Jameel - this view may not look anything like this anymore given ongoing excavations in the immediate vicinity of where I shot this from. This was the view in December 1977. It was a fun exercise trying to see how much detail I could squeeze out of the original slide.

 

[JimFox]

That's so cool Alan! You got to experience in person something we only see when we watch the movie The Mummy....

With all of the tensions in the middle east, I wouldn't want to go back there, but if it was safe, I think it would be interesting if you went back there and could compare the views from some of your old photographs to what it does look like now.

 

[AlanLichty]

That's so cool Alan! You got to experience in person something we only see when we watch the movie The Mummy....

With all of the tensions in the middle east, I wouldn't want to go back there, but if it was safe, I think it would be interesting if you went back there and could compare the views from some of your old photographs to what it does look like now.

Thanks Jim - Egypt is a pretty amazing place to visit and work in. We were there for most of the month but spent over three weeks of that out on the eastern part of the Nile delta near the Suez Canal but had a couple of days to play before catching a flight back to the U.S. and spending a day at Giza was one of them. If I could just teleport to a select set of places where I could plant my tripod I'd to reshoot quite a few places. Can't say the trip to get to most of them would be all that nice these days. I have more than enough stories from when I was there in the 70's.

 

[Michael13]

I know I've never seen a shot from this POV before, interesting to see the Sphinx's location relative to the pyramids. And not a tourist in sight - well done!

 

[Kurt Harrigan]

Interesting view, I've never seen that from this angle. How much latitude do you have to adjust the white balance?

 

[AlanLichty]

I know I've never seen a shot from this POV before, interesting to see the Sphinx's location relative to the pyramids. And not a tourist in sight - well done!

Thanks Michael - there might be a lot more tourists there in mid winter these days but activity was quite sparse when we were there. If you bring this up to full size you can see a cluster of them near the base of Khafre's pyramid but they are small at this distance.

 

[AlanLichty]

Interesting view, I've never seen that from this angle. How much latitude do you have to adjust the white balance?

Thanks Kurt - I honestly can't say whether you can even get to the spot I took this from anymore given how tourists are herded around and cordoned off these days. I do have quite a bit of room on the white balance - I think it needs to have some magenta purged as I look at it again. This is a 47 year old slide. I will play around with it a bit more.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

This s a great image, Alan. I love the way you framed this image with the pyramids in the background. You had wonderful compositional skills even when you first started doing photography. I think that that explains why you can so easily make sense out of chaos in the rainforests of the PNW.

 

[AlanLichty]

This s a great image, Alan. I love the way you framed this image with the pyramids in the background. You had wonderful compositional skills even when you first started doing photography. I think that that explains why you can so easily make sense out of chaos in the rainforests of the PNW.

Many thanks Doug - I learned photo composition by endlessly studying the work of Josef Muench on the pages of Arizona Highways while I was growing up in Phoenix.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Many thanks Doug - I learned photo composition by endlessly studying the work of Josef Muench on the pages of Arizona Highways while I was growing up in Phoenix.

I certainly understand that, Alan. Been there done that.

 

[AlanLichty]

I certainly understand that, Alan. Been there done that.

I still get AZ Highways - my sister in Tempe gifts me a subscription every year

 

[Douglas Sherman]

I used to get subscriptions of Arizona Highways but eventually stopped because so many of the issues were not interesting and the photography wasn't so great. I know Jeff Kida but I dislike the way he attaches his name to the portfolios of photographers they feature. They are partial to the photographers who teach their workshops, which I understand, because they are trying to drum up business, but some of those photographers are real jerks. I have some interesting stories including one about a photographer I think you know.

 

[AlanLichty]

That publication definitely isn't what it used to be back in the 1950's and 60's when I couldn't wait for the next issue to be in our mailbox. I am quite thoroughly removed from the local world around AH so it would be interesting to hear the backstories you have sometime.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

I think you probably know Derek von Briesen. I knew him quite well. He came to Tom Narwid's gallery in Jerome, AZ when he was just getting started and talked with me about photography and how I got started. He thanked me for sharing information with him and said I was the only photographer that would do that. So, we always got along. What I didn't know was that he had a bad temper and when we had meetings of the Sedona area photographers, he and Tom, who also had a short fuse, would get into nasty exchanges. The all-time worst blowup started when Tom gave his thumb drive to Derek to load his images into the computer for the discussions and Derek started photoshopping them to his liking.

Derek used to do some of the photography workshops for Arizona Highways but during one of those workshops he got into an argument with one of the female participants and ended up punching her in the face. So, Derek doesn't get to do those anymore. He still gets occasional images in the magazine.

There is another story about Bruce Taubert that I will share with you later.

 

[AlanLichty]

I don't know Derek personally and from the sounds of it I am glad I don't but have seen his work in AH. Hardly earth shattering imagery and not work I would be interested in seeing on walls. Punching one of your workshop students is a far cry from anything I would consider acceptable behavior. I do see more images from Bruce Taubert than Derek's in the recent issues and at least at a glance find his work more appealing.