I was there!!

Kite Surfing in Kuwait
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

The last 2 pictures that I have posted to my Flickr account are not the type of pictures I would normally post to my photo-stream. Bad composition, too much noise etc.

What makes these 2 pictures different is that while chatting on my favourite forum, someone mentioned about a subject, and I realized that I had taken picture of the same subject. It went something like this:

Did you see the big smoke in Kuwait city today?

Earlier that day, I had gone for a function that was hosted on the 9th floor. As typical of me, I quickly opened the window and took a few rapid shots of the dusty panaroma. I realized that I must have captured the smoke in question and checked my camera and found that I had indeed captured something burning in the horizon.

Hey, it was me doing kite-surfing last week at Kuwait towers. Did you take any pictures?

Well, of course, I did!!.

The Dust Season

The Dust Season
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

The start of summer season means only one thing (besides the extremely hot weather) - and that's the start of the dust season. It permeates everywhere. Everything is covered with a fine layer of brown dust.
Dust and digital SLR's don't go hand in hand - which means when there's dust in the air, my camera stays inside the house. This picture was taken with a Casio P&S, which is not susceptible to dust.
I am told that dust like this is good for the date fruit plantations; and I think that's the only thing it is good for. It's definitely not good for my asthma!.

A Visit to the Grand Mosque

Grand Mosque Hallway
Originally uploaded by Cajie.

The AWARE Center (Advocates for Western-Arab Relations), organized a tour of the Grand Mosque. Well, I am not a westerner, but I decided to take the opportunity to join the tour.

The tour started with a gathering of all the attendees, followed by a 20-minute presentation of the Mosque and then the actual tour.

I was aware that the lighting inside the mosque will be dim so I made sure I took my Sigma 30mm f1.4, as well as the ultra-wide angle 12-24mm. I debated taking a tripod and eventually decided not too as the D200 could handle high ISO, which meant that I could shoot hand-held. In retrospect though, I wish I had carried a tripod as it would have allowed me to take some great visuals of the inside of the mosque.

Oh well. Perhaps another time. Here are some more pictures that I took during the trip.