Winding up my review of the the past decade…

My first trip of 2009 was to Egypt — a few days in Cairo, a flight to Abu Simbel and then a Nile cruise from Aswan to Luxor. Egypt is one of those places I had wanted to go to since childhood. I was a kid when they were moving the temples at Abu Simbel to get them above the rising waters of the Aswan dam. The King Tut treasures always seemed to be in the news as well. I remember making drawings of that golden mask over and over again.

Sometimes places live up to our childhood imagination and sometimes they don’t. Cairo was a lot to take in at first. Big and bustling. The pyramids were astounding but hard to really experience amidst all the tourists and people selling everything from postcards to camel rides. Access to the Sphinx was very limited, allowing only a few angles for photography. If I were visiting as a tourist, I’m sure I would have had a very different experience but, as a photographer, I found it difficult.

Once I was out of the city, the Egypt of my childhood imagination reappeared. Crowds were fewer or gone altogether and the monumental temples and sculptures were more accessible. It was easier to lose yourself in the place. If I were to give anyone planning a trip to Egypt some advice, I’d say to check Cairo and the pyramids out, but be sure to visit some sites further afield. For me, that’s where the magic was. Again, I’ve posted on this Egypt trip before so enter “Egypt” in the search at the top right for more.

I had a couple of opportunities to get out on the Nile in felucca boats. But it was the temple architecture that really caught hold of me.

Oh, and that hot air balloon ride was a highlight, too. That was near the Valley of the Kings across the Nile from Luxor. Walking down into the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and seeing the wall paintings still bright with their original color was something else. That was definitely another crowded spot, though. We were granted special permission for interior photography, then it was quickly taken away when tourists saw us and starting snapping away themselves. But temples like the one below in Dendarra were almost deserted. You could walk around and feel like you were discovering it for yourself (although someone had come along before you to install some fluorescent lighting).

I must have been making up for the cold weather of Banff the year before but 2009 was mostly hot destinations. My last international trip of ’09 was to Mexico — Puerto Vallarta and Guadalajara.

I’m not a hot weather guy and it was HOT. Beautiful and hot, but hot. Steamy, too. I would walk out of my hotel room and find a chair where I could sit for the 15 or 20 minutes that it would take for my lenses to clear up.

On my last day in Guadalajara, a friend had asked me if I would like to accompany her to some restoration shops run by the local car club members. Shiny objects are always of interest and vintage shiny object especially so. To make things even better, one of the car club guys picked us up in a restored 1941 Packard convertible. We were rollin’ Guadalajara in style.

But you know the grungy parts of the shops were my favorite:

Thanks for tagging along as I’ve meandered the backroads of my last 10 years as a travel photographer. It’s been fun for me. I’ve learned a lot by looking at where I was in 2000 and where I am now. In some ways I feel I’ve improved. There are also some things that I think I used to do better. In the early years I was much more in control over where I went and what I shot. As I started making a conscious effort to build my international stock, I started looking for opportunities to travel affordably and then worked out a plan from there. I needed to shoot a little of everything so I would go anywhere. Now I’m beginning to feel like I’ve covered a lot of bases. I have stock from North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. I’ve begun working with more agencies so that I can focus more on shooting and less on marketing and sales. When I sold directly, I had to be more focused and niche oriented. Now I can put just a few images of a place with an agency and they will still be found by buyers. I don’t have to be “the Egypt guy” to sell an Egypt photo.

I’m now reaching the point where I feel I would benefit from becoming more focused again. I want to start planning trips that are of particular interest to me rather than taking whatever comes along and seeing what I can make of it. I want to develop some themes and explore them more deeply. It’s a little bit about slowing down, but it’s also about being more productive. It will be a steady transition — I already have multiple international trips lined up for the next two years — but it’s something I want to start working toward.

One more thing I’ve learned from researching these last 10 posts is that I want to look back at every year and wonder how I managed to get so much done. I don’t want to look back at a year of my life and wonder what I did with it. We don’t get many years and we need to make each one count.