When I looked through my shots from the Jabel Shams canyon I was disappointed with a lot of them, mostly because they failed to portray the scale of the place. Take this shot for example – it's OK, but it's not easy to calculate the size of the various features. As such I've posted an additional shot here:

.../jabel_shams_canyon_3_scale_shot.php

It shows the furthest point we walked to: the site of an abandoned village. As a side note, we weren't in the least bit surprised it was abandoned as a) it was almost wholly inaccessible, and b) was perched above a several thousand foot drop. As you can see from the additional image, it looks like a section of the canyon wall was terraced, probably for growing crops. Jason and I jokingly decided that the reason it was abandoned is because the children were sent out to gather the harvest. After a generation or two, and the loss of most of their offspring to vegetable picking accidents, the locals moved out – to somewhere a bit closer to the ground :-)

Anyway, my main reason for including the extra shot is that it does give you seem idea regarding the scale of the canyon. When you compare the extra shot to the main one (the terracing is above the right-hand side of the large arch) you begin to get a much better sense of the immensity of the place.

captured camera lens focal length aperture shutter speed shooting mode exposure bias metering mode ISO flash image quality RAW converter image editor plugins (etc) cropped?

12.42pm on 15/11/10 Canon 5D Mark II EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM 35mm f/8.0 1/200 aperture priority -2/3 evaluative 100 no RAW Camera Raw Photoshop CS5 Topaz Detail no