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We recently returned from a trip to the unspoilt Greek Island so have many colourful images to show you.  Most are already online under Whole weddings and Travel Pictures, but have decided to highlight a few here.  As with our wedding photography, these images are also for sale (and can be purchased online from the Travel section of our site).  On 8 May we have a wedding in Donegal, Northern Ireland so look out for those pics appearing online (under Whole weddings) the week after that.

Elaine recently won a Gold award for Contemporary Portraiture with the Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers with a portrait of an interesting old man in Cuba, and often combines her love of weddings with travel and images of people and places she chances upon during those overseas visits.

Will try and add some more special pics from Chios here later … xx Elaine

Images from trip to Benevento & Fragnito Monforte in Italy

We usually only do wedding photos but while visiting a wedding venue abroad we simply can’t close our eyes to the scenes around us!  Loads of wedding pictures in the various posts below.  If looking for storybook wedding photos or say, winter wedding photos,  or Sikh wedding pictures etc, just pick that category from the index on the right here to see the ones you are interested in…

 Enjoy!  xx Elaine

Caught this couple during late evening sunlight in Benevento , Italy.

Arty graffiti in Magneto Monforte, Italy

Detail from a wedding venue on Italy http://www.palazzo-ducale.com/

Winter tree against clear Italian January skies, casts  shadows patterns on the wall

January washing day in Italy – at least they have the weather for it!

Just love the rusting red patina of this truck against the perfect deep blue sky!

Roadside fruit-seller in Arpaia Italy offering me lemons as she has had no sales all day…

Two black guys hang out at night by a Trendy Girl clothes shop in Benevento, Italy.

Sofitel, Taba Heights, Egypt – has amazing architecture!

Wedding Photographers Elaine and Julie are just back from 2 weeks away, after attending an International photographers’ course there, thus missing all the snow and chaos in the UK!

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for landscape & architectural photography in Egypt see Travel Section :

http://www.reellifephotos.silkstream.org/online/index.php?category=Travel+pictures

+world+wide+destinations

Coloured Canyon, Sinai.

Wedding photos below this entry…

After wandering round Cairo taking photos of interesting people and places – including a camel ride round the pyramids in Giza – my journey to Afram & Mona’s wedding takes me by train from Cairo to El Minya. Tickets sell out in advance but I was lucky to be rescued by a student from Sinai who happened to be studying at the university in El Minya itself so despite being told that there were no tickets at all, we boarded the second best train in First Class, claimed 2 seats and paid on the train itself!

Despite extremely dirty rain windows managed to get a few nice pics of the palm-lined little river that kept us company throughout alongside the train tracks.

I’m sitting in a top floor restaurant-bar with glass walls on 3 sides, looking out over the river Nile at night. It could almost be any river at night with a string of roadside amber lights reflecting into the water at regular intervals, but for the constant hum of traffic and manic horn-tooting as the drivers weave in and out precariously – clumsy as feet with shoes on in the shifting sand beneath them. Its cooler up here as my single room faces the untidy jumble of services into a tiny square of internal fresh air that seems to come only from a Mummy’s tomb.

Mona & Afram actually just did their civil ceremony tonight (while I sat in their family home doing emails!) – the paperwork only for their wedding really – without anyone there and dressed in jeans, but tomorrow have their Henna party, so the wedding celebrations proper start to get underway then, with their Orthodox Church wedding the day after, at 8pm. I’ll be covering it all, from start to finish, so that will be exciting!

View of River Nile from top of King Akhenaton Hotel in El Minya

Morning dawns to reveal the Nile in a totally different light: a hazy fat line split in the middle with a mile long island, complete with cows grazing and a little lake within itself too. The opposite side has a narrow fertile strip filled with banana trees and the odd palm, above which rise well-eroded mountain rocks in faded pink and blue hues.

Egyptian breakfast of soup of chewy brown beans, tomatoes, cucumber, cold potatoes mashed with fresh parsley, cheeses soft and hard, (had to pass on the boiled egg, bread, jam and spreading cheese and cold meat) and the ever present Egyptian tea will keep even the neediest body going all day. Time to wander around and explore, before the henna party gets going late this afternoon

Picture of Elaine & an Egyptian girl in Cairo taken by her little sister!

Just arrived today in Egypt to cover an Egyptian clients wedding in El Minya. Couldn’t resist taking a few interesting travel pics along the way though. See

http://www.reellifephotos.silkstream.org/online/index.php?category=Travel+pictures+world+wide+destinations

for the whole lot.

On arrival at the customs exit of the airport, amidst all the unruly jostling crowds, an Egyptian with an official name tag did the usual offering to find you to a hotel script, but since I had nothing planned anywhere, accepted the travel agents offer and ended up being delivered in person to the hotel of my choice – a budget hostel in Downtown Cairo called New Palace Hotel.

View from the balcony of New Palace Hotel

Well its now day two in Cairo so have a look at the rest of the pics here: http://www.reellifephotos.silkstream.org/online/view.php?main_pagesize=48&flag=view&section_id=1502

Rooftop garden cafe at New Palace Hotel

Had a lovely meal – for just over £1- (10 Egyptian pounds), with fish, tomato & cucumber salad, aubergines, rice, pitta bread and Tahini: very spicy, but typically Egyptian. I’m sure you would love it here – the street life, full of colour at night and everyone sitting out of doors. The down side is the drivers are crazy- weaving in and out all over the place tooting their horns all day and night, missing pedestrians by millimetres – literally!

Am going to see the nearest Pyramid and Sphinx tomorrow. Have hired a private driver-taxi so will be safe: its £20 but worth it, as I would never find it using public transport: Cairo is HUGE! The cars all spew out soot and black exhaust fumes but its good round where I am staying though.

Egyptian girls dancing on boat on river Nile

Had a little boat trip tonight – on the river Nile – one where all the young people go and dance to Arabic music – like in a wedding.

A man selling tea on the boat, before it set off ripped me off as should have brought my change from £1 (10 Egyptian pounds), said he would come back with the 6 Egyptian pounds – but he didn’t!. Still it was only peanuts, and he would be very happy now! Otherwise all has been very good.

The ferry crossing from Holyhead to Dublin sent our wedding photographer Julie crashing to her knees, skidding across the spray-sloshed deck like a rag doll, but in the end she made it safely down below: I had to stay on deck though, as didn’t want to waste the recent picnic by regurgitating it for the seagulls!

   Our first impressions of Ireland are happy ones, despite the driving rain, as we passed roadside stalls selling strawberries  and potatoes, 

discovered a home from home B&B – Hillside House in Gorey, County Wexford – and found everyone so friendly along the way.

View from Hillside  House B& B which is highly recommended by Reel Life Photos for service and location!

This dog seemed quite at home in his owner’s cab,

Love the colourful shops and houses – so full of personality! 

Its the Strawberry Festival this weekend in Enniscorthy so the wedding in the afternoon will be sharing the celebrations with all the strawberry lovers!

 We rounded off our first full day in Southern Ireland listening  and recording live music of a girl band singing and playing as a quartet at the delightful bar and reastaurant  the BANK in Gorey.

Sydney has many facets and moods. Even without ever having set foot in the city, everyone has an image of Sydney Opera House in their heads; so much so that we have a perceived sense of scale in our minds too. I made a flying visit to Sydney a couple of months ago – on my nephew’s birthday, as it happens – (while in Australia to photograph a wedding in Jacob’;s Creek) so was given a whistle-stop tour of the area – at night, when the streets come alive and the multicoloured glow of lights coats it with a surreal magic that most big cities seem to conjure up out of the blackness, changing its shape and forms.

I was supposed to cover around 300 kilometres a day in order to get to the Barossa Valley in South Australia in good time to meet up with the bride and groom the evening before their wedding, but by the 4th day of travel since leaving Melbourne, I was only 300km in total from my starting point, with another 700km still to go!  Still it was impossible to miss out on so many beautiful sights on the Great Ocean Road, and the peaceful Aire Valley Guest house above a rain-forest – the Otway National Park – offered an oasis of calm in which to deal with the backlog of wedding enquiry emails.  It was also impossible not to go mad with my camera round Anabelle and Martin’s house/guest house, a sprawling wooden single story house with an all round veranda, surrounded by trees of all kinds, grapefruit, lemon, and the ubiquitous Eucalyptus.

 I don’t know what this tree is called but maybe someone reading this can tell me…  It struck me as soon as I approached the Guest House after dusk during my travels.  Anabele and Martin nearly passed me on to another Guest house, as it was their night off and they were to be away early the next morning for a trip out with their 3 beautiful  children, but I was lucky!  They trusted me to let myself out the next day, and even personally autographed a children’s book for Levana (my granddaughter) that Annabel had written. They are a wonderful couple who moved here from the UK 4 years ago.  They even provide handmade soap in the ensuite bathroom – just perfect for a honeymoon couple – paradise on earth!

The Guest entrance.

I’m sitting at a beautiful location (Lorne) with individual wooden cabin houses on the hillside under Eucalyptus  trees, listening to the screeching/squawking of pure white cockatoos  (sulpher crested cockatoos apparently) – in their dozens.  Amazingly enough its a YHA, so if you don’t mind the guy in the bunk above you sounding like an earthquake every time he turns over, then it is paradise indeed!  If you are fussy though, there are private rooms available too, of course…

Yesterday I saw my first Kangaroos – albeit on a well catalogued popular haunt – at Anglesea Golf Course…

The Great Coastal Road has many visual temptations, so its time to carry on my journey to fit a few of them in…