Egypt through my eyes by Giovanni A. Mocchetti (Facebook | 500px | Instagram):
My name is Giovanni Mocchetti aka John MK and I’m a 20 years old photographer based in Milan, Italy. My work concentrates on fashion and events, but sometimes I have the chance to travel and to explore new fascinating places and cultures.
The plan was to spend 10 days close to Hurghada, Egypt to relax and have a nice journey with some friends. As photographer this was my chance to photograph outside the hotel. We booked two different unique trips and I immediately was excited about what I would see with my eyes.
The first one was a quite long ride with the quad through the Egyptian desert. There we would eventually meet local people (bedouins) in a small village. That experience was actually something I have dreamed for a while. I didn’t just want to take a simple portrait of the person I had in the front, I wanted to interact and to communicate. With some gestures and a few arabic words I could take this portrait of this little guy, who seemed always pleased to let me take a picture of him:
It was really interesting to see how everyone behaved in front of the camera. Some had a real big smile on their faces, others were just more serious, but it’s an expression I really like in my shots.
Before arriving at the village I was actually asking myself if they were uncontaminated from things that are typical from the modern world we know, for example mobile phones, or even clothes. I realized that in some way they own these things too, although it’s not completely evident to see. Under their typical bedouin dress, some of them were wearing t-shirts from typical american and european brands.
The family portrait above shows just male members, women are used to stay in the house. They were so kind to offer some of their typical hot teas, which were very comfortable to drink under 40 degrees in the shadow. Me and my friends were then trying to communicate with them while we were sitting there for just a few more minutes.
After almost an hour spent at the village we left again with our quads. For this whole trip, we had a guide of course which was surely necessary if something went wrong, but fortunately we had a save ride.
In our second trip we went on the Red Sea on a boat with other tourists. There we saw so many dolphins that I was truly amazed. It was really one of the best moments in my life. Being able to jump in the water and then see 20 dolphins in the deep blue is something that I will never forget.
It wasn’t easy though to get close, because the noise of the boat and all the people swimming were probably disturbing them. Sometimes just a few dolphins were really close to our boat and I could take some photographs:
The water was incredibly clear and we had the opportunity to swim over the barrier reef, another creation of mother nature that amazed me so much.
Unfortunately the concentration of salt in the water caused a lot of irritation on my skin, thats why I could not stay too long in the water. Still I’m honored to be able able to see so many incredible things.
At that time I was also in the middle of a project 365 which consists of taking a picture every day for a year. When I was staying at the hotel I believed that there wasn’t much to photograph, so I just went to the people who worked there and asked them for a picture.
Here in Milan it’s impossible to get such a true expression from most of the subjects you don’t know. All the people there seemed really enjoying those few moments of me taking their picture.
After I took this portrait of the man above, he was so generous to give me a self-made bracelet as a gift and that honored me a lot.
Someone told us that people there have really low income. This fact makes me a little bit sad, because it’s quite incredible that they still have a big smile on their face – they are modest and content with what they have. I realize this is a big difference with my country. Too often I see people just arguing about everything and showing how much they’re not satisfied with what they have.
From this last person, I bought their typical “Kefiah” which you wear on your head and protects you from the heat.
All the shots above were taken with a Nikon D7000 with Nikkor 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6 and Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G lenses. I want to thank everyone for reading my story and if you want to check out more of my work, you can follow me on the various social networks (Facebook | 500px | Instagram).
