Cropped image © Tariq Dajani

This is a blog about travel, but every so often it’s nice to take five minutes out for a thing of beauty.

I came across the work of British-Jordanian-Palestinian photographer Tariq Dajani back in 2007, when he won First Prize in the International Color Awards for his images of Arabian horses. They blew me away. Have a look – there’s a slideshow of his images, on his own website, here.

His images of Arabian hunting falcons here are works of art. Extraordinary. They remind me of 18th-century British landscape painters – Gainsborough, or (appropriately for the horse theme) Stubbs: measured, insightful, emotional.

Take time on Dajani’s website. His images of Dubai are perhaps the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.

Dajani’s horses were repurposed for a 2011 calendar by Saudi Aramco World – a cultural magazine focused on the Arab and Islamic worlds, published by Aramco (the Saudi state-owned oil company) out of their offices in the US. The calendar is downloadable for free here.

Tomorrow I leave for Saudi Arabia, on assignment for Aramco World. I talked to Dajani a couple of weeks ago in Amman and I was thrilled to learn that he might be photographing one of the stories I will be researching there, in Riyadh. A real privilege, if it happens (I hope it does).

Those horses. Wow.