Jerusalem Model, Israel Museum
Posted by Avital Pinnick on October 7, 2009
Because my son is in Netanya with friends, Baruch and I signed up for a tour of the Jerusalem Model at the Israel Museum. We went mainly because the guide, Asher, is one of my coworkers and a very fine tour guide. I took a few photos, some HDR (handheld) and some conventional.
Knesset
The traffic is really slow during the Sukkot holiday, so we walked from the bus station to the museum. The road runs through the government buildings and past the Knesset. I stopped to take this HDR photo:
Jerusalem Model
The model represents Jerusalem during the Second Temple period (around the time of Jesus), based on texts drawn from the Babylonian Talmud and Josephus. I never saw the model when it was at the Holyland Hotel. My husband tells me it’s much more impressive and accessible at the Israel Museum.
Asher is the one in the green baseball cap:
It was appropriate to move the model to the Israel Museum, not only because of the museum’s central location, but because of the proximity of the Shrine of the Book, which houses some of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Shrine of the Book is surmounted by a white dome in the shape of the top of the type of jar in which the scrolls were discovered, opposite a black basalt wall. The juxtaposition represents the apocalyptic battle between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, an important theme in the sectarian documents.
This photo of the dome is a conventional shot with a sunflare. The sun was fairly low in the sky because we’ve moved the clocks to winter time and we were there in the late afternoon.
I moved around to the other side and took three exposures to merge into an HDR photo. I was trying to get the cloudy, pink-coloured sky (a rarity after a very dry summer):
During the tour itself I took a few shots of the model and converted them to HDR. The photo below is a wide view of the model. The large structure at the front is the Temple and its courtyards.
This photo is a closer view of the Temple grounds. The raised structure at the center back of the Temple grounds is the Holy of Holies, which only the High Priest could enter, and only on Yom Kippur. The portico on the left side was the Royal Portico, added by Herod the Great.
This and That 
Perez Christina said
nice pics….
pam said
Thank you for sharing your trip to see the Jerusalem Model. I had to look very closely to see that my eyes were fooling me! It really is a model!
And the Shrine of the Book – a truly magnificent structure. The blocks – from what material we they formed?
apinnick said
Do you mean the white blocks on the dome? They’re ceramic tiles.
Linda said
Lovely HDR shots. I see you have people in one of them. I’ve never been successful at using people in my HDR because using the Canon s5is, I have to take three shots to do HDR. Were you using your XSI? Do you use three shots for HDR with that camera?
apinnick said
Hi, Linda, I used my XSi and I did take 3 exposures. I generated the HDR with Photomatix, which has an option to reduce ghosting caused by moving objects. The people are in quite different positions in the 3 exposures (I checked), so I imagine it arbitrarily chooses one of the images as its target and deletes anything that doesn’t match. I first noticed when I took a picture of a mall – http://www.flickr.com/photos/spindexr/4032122365/.
Linda said
Ah, thanks for that. I have the trial (free) version of photomatix, but I found it didn’t reduce ghosting all that much. I’ll have to take a second look at it. I love my Canon s5is, but I’m thinking of getting one of the Rebels – possibly the XTi.
Linda
Six HDR Photos from 2009 « This and That said
[…] The clear, cloudless skies that are typical in a desert climate are boring to photograph. They need a few clouds for interest. I was fortunate to have a “good sky day” when I took the three exposures for this shot. The bricks appear not to have been lined up properly by Photomatix, but when I checked one of the originals I discovered that those ripples are caused by the water, not the software. One of the coolest aspects of this photo was the discovery of the green tiles on the bottom of the pool. Although I’ve seen the dome and fountains many times, I had never noticed the green tiles because that area gets very little sunlight, and certainly not in the late afternoon (standard photo taken at same time). […]