Night out in Jerusalem

I was out the other night meeting my husband’s relatives for coffee and dessert at a hotel in Jerusalem. The photo above is a close-up of the water splashing in the small fountain in Paris Square, at the intersection of King George and Agron, by the Terra Sancta building. (Doorway photo below)

Jerusalem Great Synagogue:

View from the penthouse balcony of the Dan Panorama Hotel (formerly the Moriah). It’s not very good be cause parts are out of focus and not lined up, so don’t look too closely!

Dormition Abbey on Mount Zion, photographed from the same balcony.

My Favourite March Photos

To be honest, March was a tough month for photographing. With Passover and all its preparations, there were times when I really had to hunt for something to point my camera at. The worst day was the night after the end of Passover. I was tired, had a million things to do (laundry, switching the kitchen to non-Passover utensils and dishes), and the holiday ended late so there wasn’t anything particularly photogenic in the vicinity. That’s why I photographed some bottles to be returned for recycling.

But, on the bright side, I got a flash for the first time, a Speedlite 580 EXII. It’s one of those things that I never thought I’d need (since I love low light and ambient light photography) and now I wonder how I did without it. I also spent half a day in the Old City of Jerusalem, so there were plenty of good things to photograph. Luckily, it was a slightly cloudy day (= more interesting sky).

But first the Speedlite…. Wow — it’s great for photos of frozen water drops! I had the tap turned on a little harder than I intended, so I got these unintentionally elongated water drops.

During one of the March rain storms, there was a double rainbow. Since I hadn’t left home for work, I stood on my balcony, shot three frames, and created this panorama. I’ve shot double rainbows before but never an entire rainbow.

I photographed these tourists with my longest (250mm) lens. I stood on one of the stone benches at the back of the women’s section and got this shot close to the front. It just struck me as very funny, all these tourists with their cameras pointed at each other, over the barrier.

I haven’t done HDR for a while. When I did the Old City one I must have been in a mood for silly effects, so it’s a bit unnatural, to say the least. I may redo it someday, with less extreme tone mapping.

What I love about HDR is the way it reveals detail normally hidden in shadows. This photo of a Chihuly installation was taken in the foyer of the new Aish haTorah building.

I’m not sure what April will be like with my DSLR in the shop. It is still under warranty and was sent via registered mail this morning to Ro’im haOlam in Petach Tikva. Stay tuned. I did manage to borrow a camera body (an old XT), which is a relief because it’s not easy to find someone willing to lend a camera on Yom Atzma’ut. Rental wasn’t an option — too difficult logistically. There’s only one place in Israel that rents photography equipment, that I know of, and it’s  in Tel Aviv. I can’t get there by 10 a.m. by bus from Maale Adumim (if it were in Jerusalem, that’s another matter). That’s not even taking into consideration the 150 NIS/day holiday/weekend rental fee.

Now I’m scrounging CF cards because my camera uses SDHC cards and the owner of the XT only has a single 2 Gb card. The cameras also use different batteries but I should be okay with the one battery because the Speedlite uses 4 AA batteries. I wish I could try it out this week but the owner wants to use it this weekend.

Double Rainbow

Yesterday my husband and I took the day off and ran around Jerusalem. I’m glad that we went out on Wednesday, when the weather was balmy and pleasant, because this morning the weather was windy and rainy. At one point I looked out the window and saw a beautiful double rainbow. I ran outside, wearing my nightgown, to the balcony with my camera to photograph it. It was really windy. At one point the wind blew my nightgown around. I was profoundly grateful that (a) no one was home, (b) the balcony walls are solid, and (c) we live on the top floor.

The photo below is a panorama stitched with Photoshop from three shots. The match isn’t perfect because I wasn’t using a tripod or manual settings. Just pointed my camera in three directions and took the photos!

Almost forgot to add that I used a polarizing filter, which really makes the colours pop and increases the cloud definition.

Panoramas before the Storm

It was raining last Friday. I took a couple panorama shots because the clouds were so impressive in the late afternoon.

For a few minutes a small rainbow appeared over Nofei Pratt, near Kfar Adumim:

Both sets of photos were taken from my balcony at the bottom of Mitzpeh Nevo, Maale Adumim, facing roughly northward.

Jerusalem Model Panorama

I wasn’t sure this would work because I didn’t have a tripod when I took these photos yesterday. In fact I forgot about them because I was working on the HDR processing and only remembered this morning that I hadn’t tried assembling the panorama.

I stitched together six photos with Photoshop. To see a larger version, click the photo above to go to the Flickr page, then click All Sizes. Although the largest version available on Flickr is 1600 x 289 pixels, the actual size of the original is 14,489 x 2620.

Panorama of North Jerusalem

It was too quiet at work today. Is everyone sleeping off the heavy eating of Rosh Hashanah? Or has the fast of Tzom Gedaliah induced a catatonic state in the project managers at work? I went out on the fifth floor balcony and tried shooting a panorama of Jerusalem looking towards the neighbourhood of Ramot. It’s hard to get the full impact of the photo here. If you click the photo and go to the Flickr page, you can see the larger sizes.

I learned some things:

1. If there are clouds in the sky on a windy day, it’s nearly impossible to align them.
2. Seven photos is probably a bit too many for a beginner. I should have started with something less ambitious, like three or four photos.
3. The Photomerge function in Photoshop requires quite a lot of computer power, so it’s a good idea to downsize the photos first, unless you enjoy staring at an hourglass for 20 minutes.
4. Fix exposure problems in the camera. If the photos are too dark, they are going to be hard to align. I did a test shot on the sixth floor, then walked down to the fifth floor, chatting with a friend on the way. Probably 15-20 minutes had elapsed, long enough for the sun to sink, more clouds to blow around, etc. I should have done another test shot but I didn’t think of it at the time.
5. Don’t even think about fixing the exposure problems in the individual photos and then merging. It just isn’t worth the headache.
6. Allow plenty of overlap because you’re going to have to crop a lot more than you expected: “Whew! Finally got the horizon nicely aligned. Oh, darn, those roads at the bottom don’t meet….”

This panorama shot is made from seven separate photos, taken with a polarizing filter.