Movie in the Sukkah

Here are some notes on the movie in the sukkah photo. Although I was using a tripod, I set the ISO to 800 because it was quite dark and the subjects were moving.

Here’s the original, as it came out of the camera. The lighting is very yellow because of the street lights in the park behind the yard.

Often I deal with the yellow street lights by making the photo B/W but in this case the final effect seemed to dark and cold.

In the end I decided to reduce the saturation and increase the fill light midpoint so that more detail was visible. I didn’t go all the way to shades of grey because I wanted a little warmth left and a hint of colour in the decorations. I cropped the white area of the wall of sukkah so that the eye would be drawn more to the inner part. Similarly, I cropped the ceiling (top) and chairs in front (bottom) to reduce the clutter and simplify the composition.

Incidentally, the chair that I cropped out was the one the family offered to me. This shot wasn’t exactly posed but it wasn’t candid either. I didn’t sneak up to some unsuspecting family sitting in a sukkah and set up my tripod outside the door. They knew I was there but I waited until they were engrossed in the movie.

Second Day of Sukkot

I needed a break from guests and entertaining, so I went out with my camera and tripod to take a few photos on Saturday night.

One of our neighbours spends hours decorating his sukkah and he let me photograph it. He collects interesting things from junk shops and has found some amazing pieces among the trash.

During the holiday we are supposed to try to live as much as possible in the sukkah. A family watches the “Wizard of Oz” on a laptop at night.

I walked up Metsiltayim street and then up one of the staircases to HaNevel, to photograph Mitzpeh Nevo. This photo is not a panorama. It was cropped at the top to remove the expanse of empty sky and at the bottom to remove the water heaters and rooftops. One of these days I’ll try to put in notes about the lights on the horizon.

Actually, I had wanted to recreate a photo I took in December, 2007, when I had just bought a Canon PowerShot S5:

Here’s the version I took last night with the Canon Rebel XSi:

The lights have changed and the SLR has better focus.

Preparing for Sukkot

Friday, the day before the holiday of Sukkot, was very busy, so I’m only able to blog about some of the things I did today on Sunday.

Dog Sweater

I finished the dog sweater! I took it over to the Woolfs in case it needed adjustments, because I don’t knit or sew during the week-long holiday. Fortunately, the sweater fits Lady well and she didn’t try to scratch it off. The red colour suits her.

Here’s a photo I took on the way to delivering the dog sweater. These are sukkahs on balconies on Katros street, Maale Adumim, taken from the Mitzpeh Nevo road.

Knitted fruit photographs

Years ago I knitted some fruit decorations for the sukkah, so that if it rained heavily at least something could be salvaged. I needed some decent photographs, so I rigged up a light and photographed them. They’re a bit crumpled, straight out of the box. There are no patterns because I made them up as I went along. They’re stuffed with the foam wrappers that come with etrogs.

Apple Galette

Of course, no holiday is complete without hours of cooking and baking. We were invited out for lunch, I had soup and challah in the freezer, so my baking load was comparatively light. I made an apple galette, based on Smitten Kitchen’s recipe. Mine was far simpler — no glaze, for example. But it was delicious.