I can’t believe how much time has gone by since I uploaded photos. Lag BaOmer (33rd day of the counting of the barley offering when the Temple still stood) was two weeks ago. Work’s been insane, so I haven’t had much energy for other activities in the evening.
Lag BaOmer is accompanied by frenzied burning of bonfires. Israeli children deforest the country, gathering scrap wood, shipping pallets, old furniture — if it burns, it’s not safe to leave outside during the weeks after Passover!
The photo of the two girls meeting on the street with their collection of tree branches, old chairs, and a plastic baby seat (doesn’t seem very good to burn) is a bit blurry because I was across the street and had to take the shot very quickly when cars weren’t in the way.
Other years I’ve photographed the bonfires. This year I stayed indoors because I prefer breathing clean air.
The Bnei Akiva (youth group) in our neighbourhood takes its contribution to local air pollution very seriously! They gathered an amazing quantity of wood for burning. The boys are unloading one truck while a car is driving up with another load.
My husband and I went to the annual fun day at Superland (amusement park in Rishon leZion), which my company holds every year. Our son didn’t come because he had activities at his pre-army academy that day. I didn’t take my big DSLR this time, just a small point&shoot. This photo was taken from the ground.
One of our annual traditions is the Congo raft ride. I held the small camera by the seat as we spun around. It reminds me of old computer games, so I chose an electronic audio track. Must be the feeling of spinning around and bouncing off such obviously fake rocks.
The Jerusalem Light Exhibit begins in about ten days but for the first time I won’t be photographing it. I’ll be in Italy for 10 days with the family!
I took a series of photos of a fig bud and a fig tree from February 14 to May 8, 2012, in the courtyard of the building where I work. Unfortunately, I assumed that this series would be finished (and the tree in full leaf) by Passover. I was wrong, so there is a noticeable gap where I wasn’t around for 8 days. Moral of the story: pick a tree closer to home.
I took the photos at roughly the same time each morning, but you can tell that it took me a while to figure out where to stand so that I could get a consistent results. The tree photos are all over the place, but leaving a camera and tripod set up for three months at work was not an option…. So I’ll have to be more careful about that in the future. I’ve already got next year’s tree picked out, with a couple other possible candidates and I’ve set a reminder in my calendar for next February.
Not much happens for the first half of the series, so the early pictures are more of a testimony to my sheer stubbornness. Every morning I would get my espresso in the dairy cafeteria and walk outside to the courtyard to photography “my” tree, sometimes borrowing umbrellas from co-workers. It is interesting to see the changes in the weather and the ground cover and other trees.
I made a short video at the Ice City exhibit. Canon DSLR 550D (aka Rebel T21), 18-135mm lens, music from YouTube Audio Swap (it always cuts off the last few seconds of audio but there’s nothing I can do about it, short of downloading the sound file, adjusting it to the length of the video, and re-uploading the edited video).
Here’s a news clip from CCTV (China):
The next video is a very cool (no pun intended) promo, showing time-lapse photos of the building of the complex and shots of the artists creating the sculptures. It’s interesting to see the sculptures in their pristine state. Only by comparing my photos with this video can I see signs of wear and tear. Of course, they’ve also had one partial meltdown caused by equipment failure.
The last video is a promo for Ice World (same artists and same video company as the previous video) in Macau. The fact that it’s labeled, in Hebrew, Ice City in Jerusalem is a bit confusing but this exhibit is definitely not the same. There’s some overlap but the Macau show seems to have been larger and the sculptures more elaborate. The long slide is awesome.
In Israel, Memorial Day for Israel’s fallen soldiers comes right before Independence Day. Firework displays are held all over the country, so we made our annual trek up the hill to watch the fireworks in the center of Maale Adumim. This year I decided to do something a little different — a video instead of photos.
We were very close to the site. I had to clean ashes off my lens in the morning. In some parts the video looks out of focus because there was so much smoke hanging in the air (the strong wind had died down). Some of the fireworks exploded so close to the ground that the guys down in the wadi had to run around extinguishing the little brush fires. The colours were much more intense in real life, of course. If I try this again, I may lower the exposure compensation so that the highlights don’t get blown out quite so badly.
My officemate thinks that Israel probably has one of the worst marching armies in the world because they hardly ever march. After Baruch and I hiked through the Jerusalem Forest, we walked through Yad Vashem to Har Herzl. We saw soldiers rehearsing for Independence Day (Yom Atzmaut) ceremonies. I tried translating the directions and eventually gave up. It maked me very glad that I will never have to march in public.
Har Herzl is Jerusalem’s military cemetery. Heads of state and other important people are buried there, along with thousands of soldiers (I didn’t see that part).
I have no idea who heita3 is but he’s one heck of a musician with a knack for turning his fridge contents into ocarinas. Carrots, broccoli, cabbage, even bananas and eggs! He has a Facebook appreciation page but I don’t know his real name or what made him take up this unusual hobby. I admire his creativity!
Heita3 teaches you how to carve a carrot occarina — in English!
This amazing video is filmed upside-down, under the ice of Lake Saarijärvi in Vaala, Finland. It wasn’t easy finding information about the director or the video, but I did find this article on DiscoveryNews (Jan. 4, 2012). It looks like a lot of fun!
Credits and description from YouTube:
Divers:
Fisherman: Eelis Rankka
Fisherman’s friend: Tommi Salminen
Boy with the balloon: Jukka Pelttari
Camera and editing: Juuso Mettälä
Manuscript by Juuso Mettälä and Eelis Rankka
Safety divers: Esa Vuoppola and Juhana Heino
Music: Stefano Mocini: The end of the doubs
Couple of things about this video:
Camera I used was Sony HDR-SR11 with Amphibico HD Elite housing.
The Wheelbarrow was saved from the bottom of the lake and I have used it many times after that.
The rubber duck and the balloon are also home with me.
None of the divers got any permanent damage either.
And yes, we had a lot of fun making this video.
I don’t often post humourous videos, but Chanukah is only two weeks away and I thought this was cute. It’s a medley of pop song parodies, around the theme of Chanukah, created by the Aish haTorah Yeshiva. The credits are on the download page of their site. The production itself is quite impressive.
Is there anyone who doesn’t like coloured pencils? I found this lovely stopmotion animation on Boing Boing.
This is the video debut of Australian musician/singer Hudson, with animator Dropbear (aka Jonathan Chong).
I did a little more digging and found another stop-motion video on the making of “Against the Grain.” What amazing manual dexterity and patience. The last screen reads: “920 pencils. 5125 images.” Wow!
I was born in Toronto, grew up in Kitchener, and returned to TO for my first two degrees. I loved it. Well, OK, I don’t miss the hot, muggy summer I lived in Tartu, a high-rise student dorm with rooms smaller than a jail cell, according to my father who designed the Edmonton Remand Center, but I loved living in the Bay/Bloor area for six years.
Ryan Edmond made this time-lapse video of Toronto. I can’t get over how much the city has changed. It’s still beautiful.
