I knew when I composed the last word of my book that it needed something more—some special touch–to tell my story. Happily the answer to this quandary was instantaneous. I had literally taken thousands of photos during my three visits to Egypt, and some of them were quite picturesque and noteworthy—even unique. Thus, I immediately started scrutinizing the many albums I had created for Facebook from 2011 thru 2012 and rummaged through my old photo album from 1996. I then proceeded to peruse my book and meticulously handpicked what I perceived to be the perfect photos to highlight the events and the people in each chapter. 
This process took several weeks to complete because I realized that I needed photos of some friends that I had not taken for various reasons. It was necessary to seek the assistance of my friends to send their personal photos to me. However, many problems occurred because of this request. Most of these photos had been taken with phone cameras. Thus, the resolution was low and did not meet the 300 dpi quality required for publishing. Of the original 160 planned photos, 45 fell in this unusable category. I was devastated. My publisher and even my son Mark who is the art director for Readers’ Digest in Germany informed me that they could not be corrected. However, my favorite word as I have indicated in my book many times is BELIEVE, so I did not abandon hope and knew I would discover some way to include these essential photos in my book. As I had hoped, I got my miracle. A young, highly intelligent fifteen year old Egyptian friend named Yahia Ehab volunteered to help me. With the help of Google, he quickly found the solution to raise the resolution for all of the 45 photos and generously repaired them for me. They are proudly displayed in my book, and no one can differentiate the ones that were repaired from the ones that already met the needed high quality. 
The final count of photos published was 153. I did decide to exclude seven photos before the final submission to my publisher. I have many favorite photos, but too many to mention in a blog. Thus, I will post a few of them here, and if you read my book, let you the reader select the ones you like the best. Each one of the photos either depicts an extraordinary memory, an important personal life event, a special friend or group of friends, or some magnificent scene in Egypt. As the old saying goes, “a picture can tell a thousand words” and some of these fall into that classification.
Randi D. Ward
May 31, 2013
2 Responses to A Book Filled With More Than Words