Category Archives: Travel

Through the Lens, Dead Sea

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Israel consists of a very broad range of geography: coast, desert, mountains, forests, in a very small area making it a great photo location for those interested in nature and landscape. The Dead Sea is an incredible and unique place to photograph, at the lowest point on earth, part of the Great African Rift valley, in the crack in the earth’s crust created when Asia and Africa were torn apart five million years ago.

If you’re into photography and want to make that part of your Israel experience you need a guide who is also a photographer. I am delighted to announce that I am offering personalized photography tours of Israel (along with tours focussed on history, archaeology, religion and more), to enable you to get the photographs you’re looking for.

Here are some of my photographs from a photoshoot that I did with clients starting at sunrise at the Dead Sea.

 

Here’s what the clients said:

We got some amazing sunrise photos at the Dead Sea, we hiked through canyons and got lots of cool shots there, then Shmuel found some unique salt formations back at the Dead Sea. We captured some great photos of sinkholes.

To sum it up this was the highlight of our 17 day trip to Israel. Shmuel delivered beyond our greatest expectations.

Through My Lens, Dead Sea

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SB MudThe Dead Sea is located at the lowest point on earth, part of the Great African Rift valley, in the crack in the earth’s crust created when Asia and Africa were torn apart five million years ago. Yesterday we drove down to the Dead Sea from Jerusalem for a relaxing day. We chose Mineral Beach and soaked in the 39º C (that’s 102º F) thermal pool, floated in the Dead Sea and slathered ourselves with mud.

In my last couple of blog posts, A Glimpse of Tomb of Moses and Sunset at Large Makhtesh, I shared photographs that I took in the late afternoon, a good time to take photographs. These photos continue this theme, taken as the sun sank behind the cliffs and the moon rose over the mountains of Moab in Jordan. The photographs were taken with a Nikon D90 DSLR camera with 18-200mm zoom lens.

Blue Dead Sea

Dead Sea in Blue, early afternoon

The photograph below was taken pointing west at the sun after it had sunk behind the mountain (the other photos were pointing east at Jordan). This meant that there was only a few minutes of light to capture these images.

Sun setting Dead Sea

Sun sinking behind the mountains

Dead Sea sunset

Sunset at Dead Sea

Moonrise over Dead Sea

Moonrise over Dead Sea

Rosh Hashana 2014

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Bowl of almondsThis week is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. The upcoming year is special because it is a shmita year, a sabbatical year, the seventh year of the agricultural cycle where according to the Bible the land in Israel is to be left fallow. So in the next few days we are taking time to work in the small garden beside our house in Jerusalem, pruning the grape-vine and fruit trees, clearing the vegetable bed, harvesting, planting. At other times we can sit under our vine and fig tree as recounted in Micah 4:4.  We discovered and harvested the almonds on our almond tree. Our pomegranates are ripe in time for the holiday.

Maya Pomegranate Sumsum

It wasn’t the easiest year. The fighting between Israel and Hamas caused a sharp drop in tourism, I had some cancellations and only one day of guiding over the summer. We had two sons who were in Gaza with their army units. But now tourists are coming back and I’m guiding.

We wish you dear friends, subscribers, readers of my blog, would-be clients, travelers to Israel, pilgrims, a Shana Tova, a very good year. May your year be as full as a pomegranate with blessings, health and happiness.

2013 Year in Review

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First day of the new year, a good time to take a few moments to review the year. It also marks 6 years that I have been guiding and blogging. This year I became authorized to guide tourists in areas of the Palestinian Authority, specifically Bethlehem and Jericho. I added 94 new blog posts (55 the previous year) for a total of 281, that’s a lot of information and photographs (over 1000 images).

There were 85,310 page views this year (77,379 page views last year), up 10.3%. There are currently 258 people who have subscribed to my blog (140 last year) and I use WordPress Publicize to automatically push every new post to 262 people on Facebook. I have a Facebook page, Israel Tours. I tweet when there’s something I want to share that doesn’t warrant a full post; the most recent tweets appear on the homepage.

I was quoted in the New York Times article about the Herod the Great exhibit. I was invited to write an article for a UK travel magazine as an Israel expert. I guided a team from the BBC who were doing a tour of the Holy Land in the footsteps of Edward Prince of Wales and his official photographer Francis Bedford.

Here are the links to this year’s posts in case you missed some:

[display-posts posts_per_page=”94″ wrapper=”ol” include_excerpt=”true” offset=”32″]

Guiding in the Snow

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Thursday it started snowing in Jerusalem and I went for a run on a trail behind the Jerusalem Biblical zoo. Took these two photos that I’ve entitled “Green and red in the Snow”.

Pine in snow Red leaves in snow

Friday it snowed most of the day and I guided a group of university students from California in the Old City. Most of the sites in the city were closed. This is a photograph I took from Yemin Moshe of Mount Zion on my way to meet the group at Jaffa gate.

Mount Zion in Snow

Today we returned to the Old City in the morning hoping to visit the Haram el-Sharif but it was closed. Instead we were able to do a tour of the Western Wall Tunnels. Afterwards although the White Fathers compound was closed we did find four churches on our way to the rooftop view at the Austrian Hospice, only to find it closed too.

Then off to Bethlehem in the afternoon. Even with all the snow we had a great couple of days.

Pepperdine University students

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.

Like this guide. Having grown up in Canada I know snow.

This inscription can be found on the front of the James Farley Post Office in Manhattan, NYC at 8th Avenue and 33rd Street. The inscription was chosen by William Mitchell Kendall of the firm of McKim, Mead & White, the architects who designed the building in 1912. The sentence appears in the works of Herodotus (in Greek) and describes the expedition of the Greeks against the Persians under Cyrus, about 500 BCE. The Persians operated a system of mounted postal couriers, and the sentence describes the fidelity with which their work was done.

The Central Post Office on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem is a Mandatory style building built between 1934 and 1938 to the design of the main architect of the public works department of the British Mandate, Austen St. Barbe Harrison and government architect Percy Harold Winter. Harrison also designed the Rockefeller Museum and the British High Commissioner’s residence in Armon HaNatziv.

I have photos of Jerusalem in the snow from last January here.

Pomegranate for Rosh Hashana

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This evening is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. One of the things that I love about living in Israel is that the Jewish holidays fit the seasons and the country. The pomegranates are ripening on the trees in our garden just in time for the holiday.

So to all, subscribers, readers of my blog, would-be clients, travelers to Israel, pilgrims, I would like to take this opportunity to wish you a Happy New Year and may your year be filled with blessing, personal accomplishments, satisfaction, health and real joy.

Pomegranate sky