Photo of the Week: Dec. 16, 2008

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: The little curl at the top of the tree – and how perfectly it rolls over to the right and how impeccably it echoes the roundness of the sun – is the reason I took this photograph. Beautiful sunsets are frequent in the Judean mountains near my home and I've taken enough satisfying shots to be able to enjoy them without my camera. This photo was the culmination of a short hike around the community of Bat Ayin in Gush Etzion, south of Jerusalem. I don't think I would have even noticed the trees had I not paused to look up at the sky, just to see if perhaps something interesting were about to unfold. As soon as I did, I spotted the sun dipping into the gap between the two silhouetted trees. I adjusted my angle of view slightly and waited until the sun dropped to the midpoint of the space. Because the sky is almost entirely without clouds, the dark trees need to occupy some of the empty space at the top of the photo to provide balances to the composition. All photographs, especially those shot in nature, preserve fleeting moments in time. A few months later I returned to this spot and both the tree, and its cute little curl, were gone.

Photo of the Week: Dec. 9, 2008

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: The last time I posted a photo of food, a shot of mouth-watering red grapes ready for harvest, a number of people wrote to me that they wanted to grab one and take a bite! I hadn't even sampled them myself while out in the field, but I can attest to my supreme enjoyment of two of the challot featured in this week's picture. This is a photo I had tried on several occasions to capture, but I never managed to find the right bakery displaying its loaves in a manner that allows so many to be photographed in one frame. It helped that they were outside on a sidewalk, situated under an overhang which blocked any direct light, thus creating very soft, diffused and near-perfect lighting for this shot. In order to take the picture, I had to contend with two obstacles. Most difficult were the many shoppers passing through the market and between the subject and my camera on a busy Friday morning. Most dangerous were the cars moving along the street where I stood in order to get back far enough to include the entire bread rack in the frame. And I had to wait for an opportunity when neither cars nor shoppers interfered. I cropped the image to remove the sides of the metal cart holding the loaves, which I thought looked unappealing, and to create the impression that the challot are infinitely numerous. By filing the idea for this image in the back of my mind, it became readily accessible the moment opportunity arose. Taking them home was as easy as releasing the shutter and 20 shekels from my pocket. The only thing missing is the delightful aroma.

Photo of the Week: Dec. 2, 2008

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: I've probably burned a barrel of oil unsuccessfully chasing after rainbows during the fleeting moments between sun and storm. In this week's photo I did find a rainbow of sorts, on a scintillating fall morning when not a single drop of rain fell from the sky. Imagine for an instant a rolling hillside speckled with white rocks, neatly planted rows of fruit trees, a winding, dirt road, a distant cow shed and an electrical tower. Amid this collage of nature and industry, between the dusty road and the rusted carcass of a bus, lay a sea of colorful leaves that arced through my viewfinder like a rainbow bending its beauty across the horizon. I found a cluster of rocks which provided enough elevation to shoot down on the mass of leafy color and blot out the unsightly surroundings. A zoom lens allowed me to isolate my target and trim the strips of color into nearly equal parts.
This photo resembles a work of pointillism. The great impressionist masters understood that the interplay between color and light intricately represented on canvas brings the viewer's eye to a point of appreciation which is rarely matched, even by the physical world. Digital camera sensors and some modern printing presses, reproduce this technique using red, blue and green pixels in order to build the proper color relationships as seen by the human eye. At the right time and place, this trio of visual workhorses blend to reveal the ever-elusive pot of gold.

Photo of the Week: Nov. 25, 2008

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: One of the joys of teaching photography is giving a group of students the same assignment and afterward discussing their vastly different interpretations of the same subject. Invariably, it’s a learning experience for everyone present, including the teacher. I played that game with myself earlier this month while racing against the setting sun to find a viewpoint that captured the radiance of fall in northern Israel. This week's photo depicts the same valley shown in last week's photo, situated just south of Metula along Israel's northern border. Taken a few minutes earlier and looking to the south as opposed to the west and into the sun, it offers an entirely different perspective on this idyllic setting.
This is a more complex photo which defies a brief description. I had to crop this image very carefully to remove some ugly farm machinery and retain only the natural features of the land within the frame. Precise cropping can elevate an average photo to something exceptional, so I often experiment with different crops until settling on a final composition. In cropping this photo, I began by slicing off a small section of the olive trees from the bottom edge, which improved the photo in three ways. First, it allowed the orange plum leaves to flow more prominently into the frame by entering through the lower left corner and continuing up to the center, following the action of the photo. Secondly, a darker clump of olive trees fell into the right hand corner. Having a slightly darker area along the photo's edge keeps the viewer's eyes within the photo. Finally, trimming the clump of olive trees makes them about the same size as the photo's two other prominent features. The lack of a clear center of interest pits these equally-sized sections against each other in a tense competition to hold the viewer's eye. Likewise, the photo's odd assortment of colors fights with each other for prominence rather than blending harmoniously. Most of the time I build the composition around the main point of interest, but in this case, the clash of color and content adds tension and imbalance while serving to enliven the overall picture.

Photo of the Week: Nov. 18, 2008

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: Anyone who encountered me toward the end of my recent three-day foray to the north would have seen the effects of rising three consecutive mornings well before dawn and schlepping my gear and ambition through dewy trails and prickly underbrush until darkness and exhaustion set in. After 583 km of travel by car and several more on foot and 652 shutter releases, I can reveal that I brought home five excellent landscapes. If I were a hunter, which I sometimes imagine I am when out in the wilds with my camera, I would have settled for bagging one lion. So five is a roaring success!

Just north of Kiryat Shemona, a few seconds before the itinerant Israeli runs out of country, is a small valley below the town of Metula, where farmers have planted groves of pear, plum, olive, and pomegranate, along with grapes and an assortment of other greenery. I had noted this bucolic spot in the past as a potential shooting location in the right season. That moment arrived on Nov. 6 at 3:42 p.m. Turning onto a rare paved road that descended into the valley and up the far side, I found a position looking across the valley and into the setting sun. I thought at the time I had missed the moment, because there were already deep shadows on the upslope and the sun was so low I had to shade my lens with my left hand to reduce the extreme glare. Staring into the sun as I composed, I could barely see what spread out before me and I was concerned that the shadowed areas would appear as black in the final image. In retrospect, the final result as shown above is nearly perfect. The shadows miraculously fall along the outer edges of the composition and provide depth and contrast while the golden sunlight paints a swath down the center of the frame. The play of light and shadow combine wonderfully to create a beautiful, warm autumn afternoon feel.

Photo of the Week: Nov. 11, 2008

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: In my hometown, I have identified numerous locations with excellent lighting and background conditions and I know just what time of the day and the year to bring my portrait subjects to these sites for the best results. When I photograph in a new location, the first thing I look for is a suitable background. It may seem counter intuitive, but letting the background be your guide to both what and where to photograph will guarantee your subject remains the focal point of your image. Wandering among the fall colors of northern Israel last week, I discovered a plum orchard growing along the banks of the Hermon Stream, not far from Kiryat Shemona. Having invested the first rays of daylight in a grander landscape, I honed in on the smaller details of the season as the sun rose higher. This shot afforded two opportunities for varying the background. By lowering the camera angle slightly, I could set the leaves against a shadowy area that would turn almost entirely black and provide a nice emphasis to the bright color splotches. The second alternative is seen above: I lowered my tripod a few inches and raised the camera angle to bring a nearby tree and its assorted color patterns into the background. The background is still well out of focus and dark enough to give a kick to the brightly colored plum leaves. But what I really like about this composition is that the hint of color in the background suggests a larger picture of what the orchard looked like with dozens of trees at their peak forming a sea of red, orange, and gold hues. Keep your eyes on the background and what's in the foreground will also be a lot more visible.

Photo of the Week: Nov. 4, 2008

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: During a recent workshop with a group of young students, we spent an hour exploring one of Jerusalem's old neighborhoods looking for the hidden treasures of great photography: compositional frames. Using water pipes, tree trunks, a street sign and a hole in a wall, I taught the group of teenage boys how to crouch and bend their bodies, and their vision, to see through layers of depth and compose images with foreground frames that isolate the main subject. This photograph of a vineyard in the hills near Alon Shvut in Gush Etzion is a slight variation on that lesson in that the frame is the main subject, with the distant hills offering just a hint of the majestic fall landscape. To accentuate the vibrant colors of fall, there is no better technique than shooting directly into the sun and letting the light pour through the multi-colored, translucent leaves. That can create difficulties with lens flare on a cloudless day, but one easy solution is to find something to block the sun from shining directly into the lens. This photo demonstrates how making a tiny adjustment in the camera's position placed one leaf directly in front of the sun, allowing only a few select spikes of sunlight to filter through. Once you catch on to how easy this is, you may find you are seeing frames even when your camera is safely stowed away for the day.