Saturday, February 3, 2018

Hetpet tomb

An item on Drudge points to an AP article about a 4,400 year-old tomb discovered in the expanded area of Cairo. With paintings in good shape. How exciting. mThis has my interest. But the A.P. article doesn't have any photos. And that's useless. The article at Live Science promotes their coverage by the title "In Photos, Tomb of a Royal Woman Found in Egypt."

I dislike being a complainer when offered something fantastic like this for free, but I cannot help it. It's my nature. A character flaw. My interest requires excellent photos. And it's not just me. While happy with the dribs and drabs, so much is left out. And here is where great equipment is essential. One photograph shows a Muslim woman using her cell phone taking pictures, and the pictures shown are cell phone quality. With one of my lenses, I could stand in the room and photograph each wall entirely, get all of it in. The whole wall, in close quarters, and in focus edge to edge. I could get the whole thing. But they cannot. One shot is taken from then entrance so all the walls except the short one at the far end are in sharp perspective. There is not that much there, only one room shown, so you can piece it together. And the paintings are only the top half of the walls, but still. They always do this; leave out the hieroglyphics. As if the writing is all afterthought. Not that important. While there are thousands of people worldwide who would really like to have a crack at reading them.

These are the fun kind of pictures that depict everyday life, or perhaps not everyday, but holidays, and feasts, and things happening on the estate. People shown at festival times. Men playing music, tending animals, blowing into a fire. So the texts might not necessarily be religious formula. It might be dialogue of the workers.

After all that work, they let the word out to the world with pocket cameras. I'm certain there are at least 10,000 people who would pay for the chance to take great photos and the thought of an excavator just pulling out their phone drives me nuts.

Having said all that, I do really like the pictures.




2 comments:

Rabel said...

Sweet work on the flying pizza, Chip.

AllenS said...

Those are always entertaining.