What's on your bucket list?

Tom Mackie reminisces about shooting one of his all-time bucket-list locations – on an all-expenses-paid trip

- Tom Mackie

I think we all have a bucket list of places in the world that we must see – and photograph – before we die, and Jordan has been on my list ever since I saw Indiana Jones ride his horse through a narrow gorge to the incredible ruins of the Treasury at Petra. Then, as luck would have it, several years ago I was asked by Lonely Planet magazine to photograph Jordan, so I jumped at the chance. It was a great opportunity to photograph iconic locations such as the Dead Sea, the ancient ruins of Jerash and, of course, Petra – and the icing on the cake was getting paid for it!

The benefit of shooting for a major magazine was that I had a personal driver and guide that knew the locations, which made the shoot much easier and time-efficient. There was one location on the shoot list that I had never heard of, so had no preconceptions of what to expect, and that was the expansive desert in southern Jordan called Wadi Rum.