March 13, 2010

Photo of the Week: Mar. 12, 2010

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: I can still recall the first time one of my photographs became more than just a picture of something. It was a simple shot of a weathered, wooden fence post that I published in a local newspaper. A reader wrote me to say he enjoyed the photo because it evoked memories of his childhood growing up in Southern Oregon.

This shot reminded me of the first home we lived in here in Israel. The garden was dominated by a large fig tree which bore plentiful fruit every summer. When we visited the home prior to buying it, our realtor pulled a few ripe figs off the tree and we devoured them with great pleasure. It was an unfair sales ploy, but we enjoyed the fruit for many years. I took this shot on the Golan Heights last spring while prowling around the Ayit Waterfall. I used a rocky hillside opposite the tree as a dark background, which makes the leaves – no bigger than the upper part of my thumb – pop into the foreground. The early phases of spring growth are fleeting, but a photograph can preserve a moment that – like a childhood memory – is too quickly gone.

Technical Data: Nikon D300, 18-200mm lens at 200mm, f5.6 at 1/500 sec.