Macfilos Weekender by Kevin Armstrong
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One Saturday in May 2015 whilst working in Qatar in the Arabian Gulf I went to a shopping mall at sunset. The heat prevents activity in the daytime outside the air-conditioned shopping malls but at night the streets and parks come alive. People meet to chat and eat and the children run off their energy.
I was struck by the way the people on this hillock, silhouetted sharply against the beautiful sky, moved like characters in a shadow puppet play and I liked the strong three-dimensional effect.
I had the X Vario in the car so was able to capture a few images before the lovely colour left the sky and shortly afterwards
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Fabulous shot. I really like the shading in the sky. Handling the heat sounds similar to what the locals do in Arizona. The streets are deserted until 5pm, then the towns come alive.
Thanks Gents.
Wonderful image, and story – thank you for sharing. Nice tones too.
Nice photo, Kevin. I lived and worked in Qatar for 5 years from 2005 to 2010. My job there was to set up the telecoms regulator and to liberalise the telecoms market. I still visit there occasionally; my last trip was in March last year. I took a lot of photos there, mainly with Nikon equipment, but I started to use a Leica M8 in 2009. The silhouette format was one I often used, particularly when the sun was going down, as I did not want to lose the lovely colours in the sky. One tradition I had while there was to take a sun going down photo in Doha on 21st June and then to take a sun coming up photo in Dublin on 21st December, when I would be back home for Christmas. I have posted some of my Qatar photos here in an article about show jumping. I must put together a longer piece as I have photos of the Gulf, dhows, the desert, camels, souqs, mosques, Bedouin musicians and dancers etc. I also travelled from Qatar to other countries in the region and the highlights included Syria (I have an article on Syria on Macfilos), Jordan and Oman. Oman is a must for anyone visiting that area, as it is as far away from European culture as you can get in that region, with links to Africa as well as Asia and the broader Middle East. You may just have sparked off my next article for Macfilos.
William
Ah ha, very interesting, it’s a small world! We probably know the same people. I always like to see photos of the region.