17.12.10

Snow

On the street in Beirut, you can see snow on the mountains east of the city. It doesn't snow in Beirut. Ever. It's too warm.

I had to really darken the foreground so that the mountain would show up in the picture.  And it's too bad, because this is a somewhat unusual street. But, even as dark as it is, you'll note that the right hand side of the street is lined with buildings (typical), and the left is all leafy (atypical) . There aren't many streets in the city where you'd see so many trees all in one place and so cleanly separated from the other side of the road. So, why all the trees, why the stark contrast?  This street runs along a the southern boarder of the American University campus.  It's another world in there.

3 comments:

  1. Wow, snowy mountains. Beautiful.

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  2. Must be lovely to see the snow from a distance, while enjoying warm weather. Here in France we are seeing the snow right up close and enjoying frigid days and nights !

    What struck me most about the AU campus was the incredible number of cats in there. A while back I posted one photo of a street full of cats that was in the AU campus, it's here...

    http://magiclanternshowen.blogspot.com/2009/06/small-cat-apostrophe.html

    If you go down my sidebar to the index of labels, there are some other photos from Beirut and Lebanon or Syria you could see (I guess I'm being pretentious to think anyone would be interested) with labels like Beirut, or Syria, or Bekaa, etc...

    Another place that had snow on a mountain was heading fairly far south down the Bekaa valley, going away from Baalbek... to Mt Hermon, where Lebanon & Syria & Israel come together. Unfortunately the mountain itself is off limits, but beautiful views of it can be had from Ain Harcha and down to Hasabaya... if you're ever down that way.

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  3. Owen, your pictures of Lebanon are fantastic. I scrolled through them months ago--and you are well justified in directing people too them. Nothing pretentious about it.

    I wish I had the opportunity to take pictures outside Beirut more often. It's such a lovely terrain, with some amazing junk sprinkled on it too. :)

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