Photo of the Week: Sept. 22, 2010

HOW I GOT THE SHOTS: Wandering around Jerusalem during Sukkot, it's hard not to admire the handiwork of the city's more creative residents. The quaint and always immaculate neighborhood of Yemin Moshe – where I found this inviting Sukkah, - is a visual feast throughout the year and a place I love to take students during a workshop. Perched atop a home overlooking the old city, the rooftop sukkah blends beautifully with the building and its setting. I'd like to beg an invite from the owner to quaff a glass of chilled lemonade and shake the lulav.

I've added to the main image three other shots which give a taste of how Jerusalem's character transforms during the seven-day festival. The obligation to erect and dwell in the sukkah is incumbent on all Jews, no matter how small one's balcony. Some very imaginative efforts, and some not so unusual, emerge from a few hours of hammering and drilling that are as much a part of the season as the cool fall air.

Photographically, these images are not very challenging, other than trying to keep perspective while pointing the camera up high while standing close to the buildings. This causes convergence distortion, seen by the vertical lines converging toward the center of the photo, a result of the upward angle of the camera and lens curvature. There are special architectural lenses which can correct this optical phenomenon in camera or one can make a perspective change in Photoshop. Sukkot is our "zman simchateinu," the season of our joy. May we all merit to be joyful and blessed for the entire new year.

TECHNICAL DATA: Nikon D-300, 18-200 zoom at 44mm, f14 at 1/400 sec., ISO 400.

Photo of the Week: Sept. 8, 2010

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: One of the benefits of being a student of photography is that my powers of observation have grown and serve me better all the time, even when I'm not holding a camera. When I made aliya,I reaped another benefit: a pomegranate tree in the front yard of our home. For years, I watched in amazement as the tree moved through its growth cycle, from bare branches to buds, to flowering and ripening of the fruits to the leaves turning yellow and falling to the ground.

This week's photo features an exceptional pomegranate grown in the Judean Mountains, in Efrat, where I live. Following a brief fall rain shower, I stepped outside to inspect the tree, and found this robust specimen, covered with raindrops. Two weeks later, I harvested it, and it adorned our Rosh Hashanah table as one of the simanim, the symbols of blessing for the new year.

The fruit is round, and virtually every camera angle creates this profile view, which works well with the sharp points of the crown. I chose this point of view to take advantage of both the two leaves which drop in front of the upper part of the fruit, and which give depth to the photo, and the background foliage, which contrasts nicely with the red fruit.

We eat pomegranates on Rosh Hashanah because they symbolize our hope that our good deeds in the new year will be as numerous as the seeds of the fruit. May all of Israel be blessed with a year of peace, prosperity, laughter and love.

TECHNICAL DATA: Nikon D-70, 28-105 zoom at 70mm, f8 at 1/250 sec., ISO 400.

Photo of the Week: Sept. 2, 2010

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: I've taken thousands of prayer-related photographs. Most of these images were taken during a prayer service, with a focus on the person praying and the various ritual objects as they are being used. These pictures make us think more about the person engaged in prayer than any other aspect of the photo. By contrast, this image features a familiar subject, a tallit or prayer shawl, found exactly as seen here on a shelf in a coat room of the enormous Slonim Yeshiva in Jerusalem.

This still-life study of a tallit begs the questions, why is it here and to whom does it belong? As long as we have a previous relationship to this or a similar object, we can begin the journey of imagination that accompanies the visual experience. Both motivated my decision to stop and take the picture in the first place.

I used my zoom lens to capture the tallit up close using only the beautiful light pouring over the tzitzit from a nearby window. The composition is strengthened by the two single strings which fall through the center of the entwined fringes. Finally, because I was shooting at close range, depth of field was limited and I had to make a careful choice about where to focus. I chose the point where the tzitzit and loose strings meet, which felt like the most obvious visual center point of the photograph.

TECHNICAL DATA: Nikon D-300, 18-200 zoom at 150mm, f5.6 at 1/50 sec., ISO 1000.

Photo of the Week: Aug. 19, 2010

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: At the height of summer, I continue to seek out color and form in nature, even though Israel's two-season landscape is often listless and parched in July and August. One reliable subject is the sabra plant, known in English as the prickly pear cactus or Indian fig, which thrives in a wide range of climates, including some of the hottest, driest regions of the Middle East. I've captured these plants in more photogenic form when they blossom with an array of colored flowers in spring and early summer.
The flowers give way to the oval-shaped, thorn-covered fruit which resembles a pear.

This detail of one plant caught my attention because it is somewhat unusual to see so many fruits growing so orderly from a single pad, as the flat, fleshy part of the sabra is called. I was also drawn to the bright reds and greens, one of my favorite complementary color groupings in nature. The two smaller pads growing from the same "trunk" give a nice balance to the composition by dividing it into thirds.

Sabra fruit is grown commercially and the plants have been used as natural borders to keep out intruders, not unlike the modern usage of barbed wire. I mounted a zoom lens on my camera and went to work, shooting and admiring the plant from a respectful distance.

TECHNICAL DATA: Nikon D-300, 18-200 zoom at 31mm, f16 at 1/200 sec., ISO 400.

Photo of the Week: Aug. 10, 2010

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: Summer sunsets on the Israeli side of the Mediterranean Sea are fairly predictable. On most days, an afternoon cloud bank hovers offshore and moments before the sun disappears below the horizon, rays of golden light pour through holes in the clouds.I had seen this performance often enough to know it was coming, but I needed a little bit of luck to get one of the boats into alignment with the sun at the critical moment. I was able to control this somewhat by changing my position along the shore.

I've been asked many times to provide outtakes from my photo shoots, to bolster the written explanation to my process. For reasons of simplicity, I've avoided doing it until this week. Here are three shots from the series. The shot under the main photo, taken first, is a general shot upon arrival at the beach, when I began to pre-visualize the final image I wanted to capture: a silhouette of the boat with strong light in the sky and on the water. The lower shot taken closer to sunset shows how I was studying the main elements of the photo and waiting for them to come together at the right moment. The selected image combines the best light of the series in both the sky and on the water in the foreground, as well as a full profile of the boat as it bumps along the choppy water.

TECHNICAL DATA: Nikon D300, 70-200 mm zoom @ 105 mm, f16 at 1/400 sec.

Photo of the Week: July 20, 2010

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: I've been asked many times how I manage to travel far and wide each week to capture a new photo from somewhere in Israel. The answer is obvious, isn't it? It takes only eight hours to drive from Eilat to Metulla! In truth, I have very little time to devote to landscape photography, so I often combine a shoot with other assignments, which do take me to some of Israel's far flung locales.

This week's photo was shot early one Spring morning while driving from Jerusalem to an assignment near the Gaza Strip. Just before I reached Rehovot, a gap opened in the dark clouds and an eerie, other-worldly light spread out across the horizon. I wasn't drawn to the beauty of the moment, but I sensed something unusual and fleeting. Experience has taught me that these are the best opportunities to create photographs whose power derives from recording something in a way we rarely see it.

I didn't have much time to scout the location, so I pulled off the road into a small Eucalyptus grove and drove to where the trees opened up to reveal the view seen in this shot. The dramatic sky sets the mood of the photo, so I allotted a full third of the image to the sky alone. The wheat stalks bending in the wind also give a hint of the inclement weather. And I like the way the blue-gray of the sky complements the new green growth of spring. Much of Israel looks just like this shot, but rarely is it clothed in such flattering dress. TECHNICAL DATA: Nikon D200, 18-70 mm zoom @ 18 mm, f18 at 1/8 sec.

Photo of the Week: June 14, 2010

HOW I GOT THE SHOT: Driving through vast, empty stretches of Israel's deserts, I am always amazed to suddenly spy on the horizon a thriving grove of date palms amid the endless rock and sand. A brief stroll in the cooling shade of a palm forest is a welcome stop on any desert journey, and, of course, an opportunity to photograph.

With the sun high in the sky, I left the Arava Highway in southern Israel near Kibbutz Ketura and parked alongside the grove. I wandered among the towering trees for a few minutes, studying the light and looking for a good place to capture the feeling of standing among giants. I chose my ultra wide, 12-24 mm zoom lens to include as many of the frond fans as possible, in order to make the subject clearly recognizable and emphasize the feeling of standing in a forest. I pointed my camera up to the sky and adjusted my position so the sun moved behind one of the thick tree trunks, thus enabling me to shoot directly toward a very bright light source.

Date palms have been a source of food and shelter for millennia in this region of the world. The Hebrew word for date palm is Tamar, also a popular girl's name which has come to symbolize grace and elegance, and, one might add, a bit of chutzpah to grow so well in such a harsh environment.

TECHNICAL DATA: Nikon D300, 12-24 zoom at 12mm, f16 @1/160 sec.