My friend John Brockliss, a fellow member of the Leica Society, is a photographer of renown and I was extremely impressed by his latest Amberlands website gallery. The pictures were taken during John’s travels across Jordan earlier this year.
John travelled “south to the Red Sea, east across the haunting desert sands of Wadi Rum, north west exploring the astonishing lost city and tombs of Petra then driving Highway 40 into the arid wastelands towards the eastern borders with Iraq/Saudi and the ancient cities of Kerak and Roman Jerash.”
John used his trusted Leica M9 for the top colour shot and the bottom Red Sea image, The black and white pictures of the carved rock and the sheep were both were taken with the Leica Monochrom Mk.II (Typ 246).
The Amberlands photographs are all available for sale as limited-edition prints. You can find the gallery and full details here.
_________________
- Subscribe to Macfilos for free updates on articles as they are published
- Want to make a comment on this article but having problems?
If John had only taken them all in colour. Jordan is an extraordinarily colourful place – as the few colour photos in his web portfolio show. To take such stunning scenes and, in particular Petra, in black and white seems almost sacrilegous to me. Leave the Monochrome at home next time John
Beaut photography !
I know this is so, so subjective but i look at M9 colour and rendering output and still think its the most appealing – visually-
of the digital M’s. One day……. lol
Great photos John. I have put my photos, taken in 2007, in the same locations (Wadi Rum, Petra, Karak, Jerash, Gadara/Umm Qais etc) in Jordan on Dropbox and shared them with Mike. If you give him your address for Dropbox, I will share them with you. I don’t have a website (perhaps I should) and I find myself shut out from Flickr since Yahoo took the company over last September. I never found Flickr very good anyway. It is very clunky to use, in my experience.
Jordan is a lovely country and very comparable with Syria. Both countries have their good and bad points. The Bedouin have traditionally travelled between countries in that part of the world and have not paid much heed to borders. In Petra we met the son of the lady from New Zealand who had married a bedouin and wrote the book ‘Married to a Bedouin’. In Qatar where I lived I became friendly with a lot of Bedouin people who had integrated into a settled way of life by joining the army and the civil service, including the diplomatic service, and working for broadcaster Al Jazeera etc. Some of them maintained elements of their former life and culture and kept and raced camels etc. I found them very easy to understand and relate to.
Petra is wonderful but, for me, Wadi Rum was the real highlight with the almost unbelievable red sand. It has not changed one bit since the Lawrence of Arabia film was made there 55 years ago.
William
The b&w images are certainly an absolutely convincing and beautiful argument for buying a Leica monochrome! But Petra in mono? No: the magic of the place is "a rose-red city half as old as time" (poem by John William Burgon). I’ve been there, and I expect John Brockliss knows this, too!
Four more reasons I have to get an M ! (Keep my x’s) Another superb example of all the Macfilos contributors, thank you!