Zamalek
The trip I am on at the moment, photographing a couple of countries in the Middle East for a client, is proving to be a bit of a trip down the memory lane. I landed last night in Cairo, a city I have not visited since early 2008, a city full of history, that’s struggling a lot through its present times.
If you’ve read my previous post about Istanbul, you will know that this trip is all about shooting the city. Photographing interesting cityscapes that link the viewer to that particular city. I think in a lot of ways, Istanbul is a lot easier to shoot in that way. It’s got a couple of very impressive bridges, some recognizable mosques, while in Cairo, usually the one thing people associate with the city are the pyramids and the Sphinx. But obviously I can’t just shoot the historical parts, I need to photograph some actual city scenes. And while I already did manage to get some great overview shots from the Cairo Tower (which stands above everything else in Cairo), probably my favourite shot from today is this photograph of the neighborhood of Zamalek bathed in the early morning light.
I’m not quite sure why, but to me, this shot looks a little bit like taken from a science fiction movie. This is where a tilt-shift lens really comes in handy as there would have been no way to capture such straight lines with any other lens. The tilt-shift allowed me to shift my perspective up and down and flat-stitch this image from two landscape images. As always, I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this.