No Speed Bumps

Travel Visions - Selectivity and Poetic License

Though I'm back in Sydney, I still have the urge to travel post. A piece on going to the supermarket? Or to the CBD to do some banking? I don't think so!

This desire is most intense when I'm lurking around the blogosphere. I had one of these episodes - a very big one - this morning when browsing The New Antiquarian blog. I saw this C19 coloured engraving of the pyramids at Giza, just outside Cairo.


And it reminded me of a photo I'd taken there a couple of years ago.


I hoped this train of thought would help in my travel post addiction!

So I began to follow it. And consider the similarities between the two images. And what these mean in terms of the process of composing a picture in general, of whatever kind - photo, engraving ... . Primarily, how and how much is the result 'constructed'?

Both pictures are at a distance - gets everything in when things are at this scale. And have a few tiny people - enhances that scale.

At dusk with haze and dramatic lighting to give 'atmosphere' - the engraving has been more successful at this, particularly with the addition of a rising moon. The mood wouldn't've been achieved at all with a blazing midday sun.

The elevated position of the observer in each doesn't let the buildings just overwhelm, as they do in my (admittedly closer and close) shots below.



All of these choices work to bring about a romantic vision of the place, which bears little resemblance to the hot chaotic bedlam of actuality. Funny how much we can bring to what we see and how much we construct it to some imagined notion.

In addition to all this, there's poetic license in composition.

My guess is that the palm trees in the following engraving are imagined. Or added from sketches of trees elsewhere. They just seem stuck into this landscape rather than a natural part of it. Certainly there is no evidence of them today, though this is not always indicative!


My poetic license will be to tell you that the following are the travel guides, tickets collectors, tourist police and so on ... who were present on the day of my visit to Giza. And who are about to be incorporated into my initial photograph - using Photoshop.






My guess is that you are not interested in the final result. And will just slobber and fester over these photographs. As I do myself!