Photo of the Week: June 30, 2009

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: It's so hot in Israel this week that I thought a refreshing image of our watery coastline might offer a tiny bit of relief. This shot was taken at Habonim Nature Reserve along Israel's central coast near Zichron Ya'akov. I had been camping for several days and had an opportunity to study the layout of the park and find an optimal shooting location. There are numerous rocky points that jut out into the sea, affording a chance to shoot the incoming waves from an unusual perpendicular perspective rather than the more typical head-on view one has when standing on the beach.

The continuous action of the ocean is similar to the dancing flames of a fire. No wave is alike and the pattern of crest, foam, and spray is constantly changing. My goal with this photo was to capture all of these elements simultaneously while also showing some aspect of the landscape not buried in rushing water. Since I was not racing against rapidly changing light, I stood quietly for a few moments and studied the scene, picking up on the rhythm of the waves and honing in on the key areas of the composition where timing would be critical. I prioritized my exposure to a fast shutter speed and clicked off a few frames, then turned off my camera and returned my mind to admiring the setting.

When photographing in nature, photographers have to be careful not to lose sight of the moment as they push themselves to create an image that will only be appreciated in another time and place. It's a challenging paradox, but I have found that without that meditative immersion in a place, its beauty will not reveal itself to me. It's nice to take home a memory, but if you never really visited in the first place, then what is the point of going?

Photo of the Week: June 24, 2009

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: A moment of silence for the death of a legend: Kodak announced this week it is discontinuing its revered Kodachrome slide film, which had fallen out of favor, first by newer films and later by the advent of digital technology. While the technical tools of photography will always impact the craft, it is the artist's vision which shapes the final product more than anything else. Fortunately for me, I received a gift in the fourth grade from a wonderful and prescient teacher who rewarded my prowess in the multiplication tables with a puzzle game called Hi-Q. The game required assembling seven odd geometric shapes into more than 200 different wholes. The game kept me busy for years and apparently I'm still playing as I seek to compose features of the natural environment into moving photographs.

This week's image comes from Mitzpe Ramon, the giant crater in Israel's Negev Desert. The crater is vast, barren, dry, and intimidating and I was looking for a way to represent these qualities while also adding a touch of grace to the image. The desert teaches the visitor respect for nature and one can only appreciate its subtle beauty alongside that attitude of respect. I tried this image as a vertical, and although the triangles lined up nicely, that composition lost the expansiveness that is so definitive of the desert. I had been watching the clouds, but couldn't find any earthly complement until I stepped out in front of the small pile of rocks that make up the foreground and give depth to the image. They are a small detail, but a crucial missing link that completes the picture.

Photo of the Week: June 16, 2009

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: There are some places, which, like people, are highly photogenic and seem never to look bad no matter when they are photographed. The old city of Jerusalem is one such place, but even after years of studying its moods and personality, it's a challenge to find a new angle on its unique beauty. The past week, however, the city has been celebrating "Light in Jerusalem 09," a first-of-its-kind in Israel artistic event. Several world renowned light sculptors and designers traveled to the city to meld their artistic vision with the city's ancient gates, walls, and plazas. The opportunity for fresh imagery was ripe.

This shot, taken below Jaffa Gate, features a solar-powered installation called Garden of Night designed by Israeli artists Gaston Tzahar and Meirav Eitan of the O*GE Interactive Gallery in Haifa. Giant lotus flowers open and close while tulips and balls of dew sparkle and all the lights change color every few seconds. But the lights in the flowers were not the only ones changing. The event began at 8 p.m. and I knew from experience that the walls would look more impressive lit against the last blue light of day instead of the dark black of night. Because the electric lights were changing color so rapidly, I fired off several shots over about a half a minute and accumulated a selection of differently colored flowers. While several were appealing, I chose this one because I like the contrast in color between the flowers and the blue sky and the walls. The event drew large crowds to the old city, so getting there early also gave me an opportunity to shoot without any human obstruction. The show continues through June 16 and is free.

Photo of the Week: June 9, 2009

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: One result of my ongoing efforts to photograph the natural beauty of Israel is a heightened ability to predict where and when to shoot. One guiding principle I follow is always aim for the edges. The "edge" is where you find drama, tension, and emotional impact. Edges are found both in time – dawn, late afternoon and early spring – and space – where forest meets meadow, storm meets sunshine, or the ocean crashes onto the shore.

This image emerged at the end of a relaxing afternoon at the beach with my family. With nothing to do but contemplate the sun's descent into the sea, I began to notice the wave patterns as they rolled onto the shoreline of the Mediterranean Sea at Ashkelon. My interest was piqued when the steely blue water acquired a golden, late afternoon glow. A rock jetty built to protect the beach calmed the surf and the waves followed a gentle, orderly path to the shore. I fired off about 10 frames to ensure at least one shot with a staggered separation of waves that would boost interest in the composition, which lacked any focal point besides the wave patterns to keep the image afloat.

Photo of the Week: June 2, 2009

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: The giant Mt. Tavor Oaks at Horshat Tal (grove of dew) in the Galilee are about as close as I can come in Israel to the towering Redwood trees of my youth in Northern California. As straight and strong as are the Redwoods, the Oaks are wild and gnarled, unpredictable in their growth patterns and a continuous maze of photographic discovery. A friend of mine remarked to me after a recent visit to Muir Woods near San Francisco, that he found the Redwoods, among the most revered trees on the planet, boring in their uniformity, despite their enormity. He told me he prefers Israeli trees like the Olive and these Oaks, each of which seems to possess its own individual character, perhaps like Israelis.

The photographer can represent trees in their multitude, such as in last week's photo, or as nearly unidentifiable abstractions. This image appeals to me because the more abstract approach invites the viewer to let his or her imagination journey into the vast web of thought and emotion that the natural world evokes. The composition is built around the thick, curling branches, which bend and twist with a graceful asymmetry. Because my camera was pointed nearly straight up at the sky, the trunks curl inward as a result of parallax distortion and create the feeling of a spiraling funnel pulling the eye into the depth of the photo and the mind, perhaps, toward some forgotten memory.

Photo of the Week: May 26, 2009

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: One of the first assignments I give students in my introductory photography course is to bring two pictures to class for discussion – one which they like and one which they dislike. In presenting their choices to the class, students begin to develop an internal language for identifying elements in their own work that succeed or fail. I came across this week's photo in my library while researching images for a book project and stumbled upon an interesting insight into how I evaluate my work.

When I first shot this photo of an orchard on the Golan Heights, I rejected it. I don't recall exactly why, but I may have been striving to create something different or I may have been emotionally disconnected from it when editing the shoot. Upon rediscovering it in my library, while perusing hundreds of files late at night in my office, the image evoked a softness, orderliness and a genuinely peaceful early-spring-morning kind of quiet that fit my mood at the moment perfectly.

One of the best times to photograph trees is late winter or early spring, when bright green new leaves or colorful buds give the tree a unique coloration which fades as the new growth matures. I stood on an embankment looking down into the valley where these trees had been planted, and using a telephoto lens, composed an image that removed all other growth save for a small errant patch toward the top of the frame.

I try to explain to my simcha clients that the real value of their investment in professional photography will only become apparent in 5 or 10 years. Sometimes pictures deserve a second look after a period of time, so that when you return to them, you are in a place to see their true value.

Photo of the Week: May 19, 2009

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: The Dead Sea is without a doubt one of the strangest places on Earth. Vast and lifeless, its mineral-rich waters offer, paradoxically, life-giving therapy to a variety of human ailments. From a distance, one might imagine he is looking at the Arctic Sea, as iceberg-like salt domes dot the shoreline. And much like ice, they crunch underfoot and change form with time and the action of the water.

Walking along the shore one early morning last week, I let my camera hang from my shoulder as I admired the aquamarine colors of the water and an occasional bizarre, salt-encrusted chair or other man-made object, and luxuriated in the cleansing silence. This particular morning, a slight breeze wafted across the water, disturbing the absolute stillness which often creates beautiful symmetry between the odd salt formations and their perfect reflections. As a result, I chose a shot which plays on the relationship between the sky and land. The two sections of cloud are roughly mirrored by the pool and the salt accumulation that make up the photo's foreground.

A seascape is entirely flat, so it's difficult to gain an interesting perspective without elevation. I did manage to position my tripod on a salt dome, raising the camera over my head, first calculating the exposure and then composing and focusing without looking through the viewfinder. A few minor corrections and I had the shot I wanted. I hadn't been to the Dead Sea in quite some time and this visit restored my appreciation for this desert jewel and inspired me to return again to the lowest place on earth to record some of the highest natural beauty Israel has to offer.