Desert heights

We’re not quite sure what’s more impressive, the sweeping aerial views over the most spectacular landscape in the Middle East, and possibly beyond, or the fact that someone leant out of a window of a very small plane to take them. This is the famous landscape of Wadi Rum, our very own desert adventure playground, although not perhaps as you’ve ever seen it from the window of your 4x4. The semi-abstract specks of desert scrub dot the mustard-yellow dunes, while flowing lines of pick-up tracks swerve past dry river beds as fingers of blood-red rock spill out into the oceans of sand. It’s possible Wadi Rum just got even more spectacular.

 

The images here are part of an all-new series of photographs by Jordanian photographer Tariq Dajani, who is currently based in Dubai but plans on relocating back to Amman this summer. He captured the contours and textures of the Kingdom’s desert from hundreds of feet in the air, having met a pilot in the bar of a hotel on a recent visit home. Frankly, that’s where all good ideas start – only this one actually led to something.

 

Currently being displayed in Amman’s Jacaranda gallery near Books@Café, the collection is a reminder that we do actually live in paradise. We just have to get off our backsides once in a while to appreciate it.

 

Tariq Dajani: I’ve always been interested in aerial photography, and even more so when I saw an exhibition in Paris by photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, the pictures which can be viewed in his book Earth from Above. 

The Wadi Rum project was pretty much presented to me when I met a pilot in Amman who, when he learned that I was a photographer, proposed a flight over the desert to take some pictures. Aerial photography is not an easy thing to do, mostly because the logistics are so difficult – for instance, you need a plane or helicopter that will enable the photographer to shoot directly without having to look through a window. But my pilot was able to source the plane and sort out any permissions. 

 

TD: Geoff Graves was the pilot, an Englishman who had lived in the Middle East for a number of years and liked nothing more than doing something different from the norm. He piloted a Remos G3, a small two-seater, which he flew at a safe altitude of several hundred feet. We were able to have the overhead canopy removed to allow for relatively unrestricted aerial views, and I was able to lean out of my seat to take the shots. Naturally, I was harnessed in, with the camera firmly attached to my hand lest it slip. 

 

TD: Well, I used some of my regular equipment: Canon 1Ds MarkII, Canon EF 24-70mm lens, with a hood – taped down – and, as I said, a UV filter. Of course, taking the shot is only part of the process towards producing a final image. Whether using film, chemicals and paper, or, as is more usual now, digital methods, there is a lot of work to be done after taking the shot. This is partly what differentiates professional from non-professional photographers. 

 

TD: My favourites are the more abstract shots taken directly from above and looking straight down – particularly the ones that show the orange-reddish earth speckled with the shadows of thorny bushes, with the human marks of numerous 4x4 tyre tracks. One of these also shows the edges of a rocky mountain either escaping out of the sand or conversely digging deep into it. I prefer these more abstract shots because they are even more removed from what we are used to seeing, and leave it to the viewers’ imagination to invest the images with meaning.

TD: So far, these photographs have only been showcased at Jacaranda Images in Amman’s 1st Circle area, where they are available as limited edition prints.