Sunday, December 30, 2012

Testing...Testing...

I am the proud owner of a new Canon PowerShot S100 (Thanks to KV and CG for their help in making the decision to purchase this particular camera and thanks to ES for transporting the camera and SL for bringing the great retro camera case to Luxor!). What follows are some of the first shots I have taken with this lovely camera. These are all "Automatic" or "Scene Selection". I haven't had a chance yet to explore the semi- and fully manual options available to me. I'm going to have to "re-learn" manual photography as I haven't had to use those skills in years!

Flora:
Poinsettia
Red Flame (Clerodendron splendens)
Persian Acacia (Albizia julibrissin)
Fauna:
Look closely for the kite in the palm tree!
Kite near their nest
Kite again
Bee-eater just before take-off!
Buttons blending in

Beau doing his third favorite thing (after eating and playing)

Landscape, Waterscape, Moon:
Gurn with clouds
Felucca at sunset
Handheld moon


 Sunsets:

Sunset and felucca from the roof
Sunset and felucca from the Winter Palace
Sunset from MY roof 
End of that same sunset
Architecture--"Old":
Luxor Temple - Colonnade Hall

Luxor Temple - Layers of history

Architecture--"New":
Winter Palace with a golden glow at sunset

Luxor door

Thursday, December 06, 2012

Another Great Sunset...

What can I say?
Except...how 'bout those clouds?

And what about these from Sunday while we were on the roof for our first shisha of the season:



It's a hard life!

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

A Different Take on "Swan Lake"!

Be sure to go to full screen to view this rather extraordinary excerpt from the Great Chinese State Circus's version of "Swan Lake":

Friday, November 23, 2012

Out and About in Luxor

Finally! Anait and did a shopping walkabout last Sunday, with a well-deserved stop at The Roof for lemon juice (theirs is the best!), wonderful coffee (the real thing with cardamom) for Anait, and my first shisha of the season (plum). The light everywhere was wonderful, as it tends to be in the mid-to-late afternoon. And of course the views from The Roof are magnificent!
Our resident egret who always seems to hang around near CH:


 On our brief walk through the tourist souk:
Bougainvillea is very opportunistic. Here it's used the trunk of the palm tree to establish itself:
One of the ubiquitous homages to ancient Egyptian influence:

La Traviata Flashmob

I just love these flashmobs!

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Les Incontournables Macarons de Noël de Pierre Hermé!

Les Incontournables Macarons de Noël from Pierre Hermé:
Boîte de 12 macarons composée des saveurs suivantes :
ÉGLANTINE, FIGUE & FOIE GRAS
CHOCOLAT & FOIE GRAS
INFINIMENT MARRON GLACÉ 
PX - Pedro Ximenez et raisins blonds macérés


One of the macarons in the assortment--the PX:
Miam-miam!

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Inbound: Part Four

Just over a month since I arrived in Luxor and I'm finally getting around to my final post about the process of arriving! In April of this year I made a small donation to the fundraising campaign for "Trésors du Caire". The project revolved around restoring two treasures for installation in the new "Arts de l'Islam" department of the Louvre: a mashrabiya and a Mamlouk porch. Here is a video from the Louvre that was produced to encourage donations to the two projects:

Here is a another video from the Louvre which discusses the restoration process for the porch (in French, but you'll catch the drift):
Louvre Museum: In Search of a Mamlouk Porch from ikono tv on Vimeo.
For more videos including this one, all with English subtitles, click on the following links:
The New Islamic Art Department: Behind the Scenes
The New Islamic Art Department:The Collections
The New Islamic Art Department: The New Department
The New Islamic Art Department: Architecture
And in August I received an invitation to visit the Louvre and particularly the new department gratis between it opening date of September 22 and December 15. Well, guess who was going to be in Paris in October and thus able to take advantage of the offer?
Here are the front and back of the invitation:
October 13 was a rainy Paris day, which made it perfect for visiting a museum:
I spent over three hours in the department and I barely scraped the surface of the two levels of extraordinary items. While the layout is a bit confusing, the displays themselves are excellent. And the design of the space really works. Here are just a few examples of both architecture and displays:










And here are photos of the Mamlouk porch which has been installed as a passage between two sections of the display space:


My name on the video display of the list of donors!
Here is the fully restored mashrabiya:
By the end of my visit I was suffering from the MEGO (My Eyes Glaze Over) effect, but I shall return as often as possible to be able to examine individual items and sections more thoroughly.

On my way out of the museum I caught this interesting juxtaposition:
The old encompassing the modern surrounding the recent--an untitled piece in laser-sculpted stainless steel by Belgian artist Wm. Delvoye. The whole a fitting image of the Louvre itself!