Photography

When maintaiing my hard drive, I stumbled over pictures I apparently have never posted here in the forum. In 2002, a group of friendsdecided to make a trip from Austria into the South Algerian Sahara with their cars. In late September we drove with our 4x4 Pickups and SUVs over the Brenner pass through the Alps to Genoa, where we boarded the large Tunisian ferry "Carthage". After a bit more than a day aboard, we reached Tunis. Through most of the night we drove until the border of Algeria, and after having passed the lengthy border controls, we were driving for another two days southward, until we arrived in our real destination area and left the roads into the sand dunes and rocky planes.

Temperatures were around 45 degrees Celsius, a bit hot. We had to be careful not to overheat the engines. From a photographic point of view, it was a difficult trip. Unlike the winter months, there is a lot of dust in the air, nearly annihilating contrast, especially during the hours around noon. Driving, too, was a challenge, since the yellow shine of the sand was so unifoum that it was impossible to make out edges and ridges until it was nearly too late. The big advantage was that we had more time to drive, which was necessary, since our route was demanding. One day, we did not make more then 70 kilometers in six hours of driving.

The bigger problem, though, was my camera equipment. It was the last long trip with my analogue Contax SLR equipment. I had two RTS III bodies and several Carl Zeiss prime lenses, all with wide aperture. This added to a weight of some eight kilograms.

The permanent danger of our car's rollover when driving the sand dunes meant that I had to stuff the heavy camera bag deeply under all other things, to prevent it from becoming a deadly projectile in case of accident. So every stop for a picture meant to sig into the overloaded car to retrieve the bag, take the pic and re-secure it. After two weeks, I hated this rocedure, hated my equipment, hated photography at all. As a consequence, I did not bring back as many slides as I had planned, and those I shot were all damaged by dust that had settled in the cameras' interiors.

While I had made some scans of the slides earlier, only two years ago I undertook it make good hi-res scans of at least some hundred slides I liked best. Here I want to show you a few.

Btw, my photographic abstinence lasted two years, when a friend lent me one of his old Leica Ms and two lenses for a trip through the Baltic states. With this compact and always handy equipment I rediscovered my joy with pthotography, that has not left me since.

Marcus

The Erg Tifernine with the highest sand dunes of the Sahara (I drove some 200 meters, before my engine overheated).

After a long drive through black basalt rocks, the fiery red dunes of Erg Tifernine presented to us a surreal picture.

Life on Mars:

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