Last week it was announced that the government had lifted a ban on photography in public areas in the Kingdom. Perhaps no one had been noticing, but even with an official ban on photography in Saudi Arabia’s public places, people have been taking quite a lot of pictures. A brief search of the web turns up loads of photographs of royal audiences, business meetings and professional symposia. There are photos of hotels, historical structures and holy sites.
Want to see snapshots of the Hejaz Railway? Click to http://nabataea.net/hijazstations.html or http://www.hejaz-railroad.info/Galerie.html. How about a Saudi folklore group? See www3.ircica.org/urundetay.php?id=328. Jane, a woman who lived in Saudi Arabia for eight years has posted photos as part of her Q&A website, http://www.toursaudiarabia.com. Photographer Francisca Rigaud is selling her images of the Kingdom at http://www.travel-images.com/saudiarabia.html.
About three dozen photo galleries showing pictures taken in Saudi Arabia can be found at www.pbase.com, a photo sharing and hosting website. A sample of the photos’ titles include “Death for Drugs,” “Access not Allowed” and “Starbucks Sweets.” Check out more every day items such as vehicle license plates at www.olavsplates.com/saudi_arabia_slow.html or an old style public toilet in Dhahran at http://www.jldr.com/saudi_toilet.shtml. Saudi buildings, highway signs and beautiful cityscapes are online at http://www.skyscrapercity.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=641.
So as you can see, photos of Saudi Arabia are not all that rare. What is still unusual though are live webshots of the Kingdom. While it is true that Saudi television broadcasts some of the prayers live from the holy sites and this feed is available over the Internet, that is not really the idea behind a webcam. The only transmission from a webcam currently available for public viewing is at http://my.saudi.net.sa/webcam/. Check it out and see King Fahd Road in Riyadh. The images change every 15 seconds. Severe sandstorms can create impenetrable haze. However, if all that comes to your mind when you think of Saudi Arabia is camels and oil wells, it’s definitely worth a look.