New Year, New Hard Drive, New Attitude

Yes folks, I am typing to you from right here at my newly refurbished laptop - back from the shop with a zippy new hard drive and hopefully now virus-free as well. My data is safe - they backed it up and then I backed it up a second time as well onto my own external hard drive (yes, I do have one, and I do use it regularly, I just hadn't had a chance to back up this last week yet, and I'd worked on a lot of critically important files this week). On a more worrying note, they said that in addition to my hard drive crapping out, my computer was also riddled with viruses that my company's swanky anti-virus software did not find. Lovely. They recommended another program, ESET NOD 32, as much better, but since this is a company machine I'm stuck with company software. I will certainly pass the recommendation on, though I doubt it will do much good.

As you can imagine I'm feeling very relieved now that I'm up and running again, but I'm also working on an attitude adjustment. Data, no matter how critical it may seem, is just data. In the grand scheme of things it's just small stuff, and they say not to sweat the small stuff, right? I had a major run in with the Big Stuff this week, the world lost a soul much, MUCH too young to lose, and in a way so random and tragic as to defy reason. His family's life will never be the same without their son in it, and my life is forever touched by my friend's loss. That is Big Stuff. That is something truly worth grieving over, a stupid computer, whatever it holds inside, is still just a piece of plastic and is replaceable.

Something else worth focusing on is the tremendous group of friends and readers I have here. You guys pick me up when I'm down, smile when I smile, and are so generous with your spirit. I'm truly thankful that you are in my life and are here to welcome me each day and to help me grow - as a mother, as a photographer, and as a human being. I couldn't do what I do here without you.

Perspective.

I don't always have it, but I'm working on it. This week taught me that.

Wishing you all a very happy, healthy, safe and peaceful 2010.
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Major computer disaster

My laptop is in the throes of catastrophic failure, and with it all my latest work files and the last round of photos I took (including my chrysanthemum *sob*). The files are in there, I can see them with the Rescue and Recovery program, but it won't let me get them out of the C drive.

I'm on a 9-year old pentium 3 desktop for now and trying to keep my stress over this from reaching atomic proportions as I deal with my company's IT department and their distinct lack of responsiveness.

In short, blogging is going to be a bit hit or miss for (oh god, please make it just) a little while as I (please oh please oh please) sort this out.

Between that and a devastating personal tragedy that has befallen a friend my priorities are elsewhere this week.

Pink Chrysanthemum

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Hot off the press camera - shot this one this morning and loved it so much that it went straight to my etsy shop! Those pink petals really pop against the black background, and the faint checkerboard pattern on the petals (how does Mother Nature do that anyway?) add some great depth and texture to the image.
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Acadia National Park

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Visit Monochrome Weekly for more black and white images from around the world.

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Merry Christmas from Israel

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Madonna and Child, rooftop statue, Notre-Dame de L'Arche D'Alliance, Abu Ghosh

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Best wishes for a Merry Christmas and happiest of New Years to all who are celebrating. Visit Skywatch Friday for more holiday weekend skies from around the world.

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8x10 Giveaway Winner and Happy Holidays to All

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Congratulations to Lissie from Training to be a Mummy for winning the Around the Island Photography giveaway over at As Good As Cake, and just in time for Christmas too. Remember, you can pick any image from my etsy store or even one from the blog. I can't wait to see which one you choose.
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Happy holidays to all who are celebrating, and speedy get well wishes to me - after all, I've got a blogger meet-up to get to Saturday night and this upper respiratory thing I've got going on is definitely NOT on the agenda!
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Fountain at Dusk

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Visit Wordless Wednesday to see what other people aren't saying this week. A very Merry Christmas to all that are celebrating (and a fantastic rest of the week/end to the rest of us).

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Let's just say this is red

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I know, I know, it's actually much closer to pink (ok, it is in fact pink), but I'm getting sick and haven't had much time for shooting lately and pink is basically just a lighter version of red anyway. Work with me here.
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Happy Holidays everyone.

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Photo Giveaway - only 2 more days to enter

Quick! There are only 2 more days to enter to win an 8x10 print from my etsy shop over at As Good As Cake. Don't miss out!

While you're busy browsing the shop (and thinking of all the people who would love to receive a fine art photo as a gift - with yourself at the top of the list - go ahead and treat yourself if you don't win) I'll be heading off to bed - it's midnight here already and I'm fighting off a nefarious cold that has already led to the utter and complete demise of my voice. Heaven knows what it's going to attack next. If it (my voice that is) doesn't reappear by Tuesday I may have to cancel my shift on the breastfeeding helpline, and I'd hate for that to happen. It's staffed completely by volunteers and we're terribly shortstaffed as it is.

Winter Sidewalk

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An unseen park bench casts a gridlike pattern of shadow across a sidewalk strewn with fallen leaves.

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More monochrome images can be found here.

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And so it ends

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Tonight we will light the final candle on the Hannukah menorahs and enjoy the collective light of their 27 candles (8 plus a shamash, or helper candle, for each of three menorahs) before packing them away for another year.
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It's been a great holiday despite the rain and occasionally intervening work crises (both mine and my husband's - so much for early nights). There were latkes, and then more latkes, and then still more latkes (ours, friends' and the neighbors'),

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and Hannukah parties,

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and jelly doughnuts, both edible and not

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and soccer tournaments (they won 11-4)

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Gifts were given, and received, dreidels were spun, (chocolate) fortunes were won, and another year's memories were forged in love (and hot oil). Who could ask for anything more?
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Wishing you all a very happy Hannukah.
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Sky, reflected

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A bit of a different take on Skywatch this week. It's cold and windy and very very gray here this week, and it's making me long for the warm gold tones of summer.
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Just because it makes me smile

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Visit Wordless Wednesday to see what other people aren't saying this week.

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Red Gerbera Daisy

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Happy Ruby Tuesday everyone, and Happy Hannukah to all who are celebrating.
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Hmmm... Now that this is up I don't like it at all. It looks squished. Bah humbug. The center looks right but the petals are all wrong. It didn't look that way when I was working on it. I was a lot happier with yesterday's flower. Grrr...
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Calling all Israeli Bloggers

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Don't forget to register for 26 December blogger meetup being held at the Nes Ziona home of Sara Melamed of Foodblogger fame. Come on, you know you want to. All the cool kids will be there, and we all know that YOU are one of the cool kids.
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The guest speaker will be Jacob Share, the job search expert who created the award-winning JobMob, one of the most popular job search blogs in the world with over 1.5 million pageviews in 2009 alone, and the founder of Share Select Media, a company focused on authority blogging. Jacob is also the driving force behind Group Writing Projects, a great resource for (what else) blogger group writing projects.
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Like this image? Click to enlarge it, and then visit my etsy store, Around the Island Photography, to see more (link in sidebar). Fine art photographs make great holiday gifts and are a terrific (and easy!) way to send a bit of the Holy Land back to your loved ones abroad.

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Lisianthus Bud

And now for something completely different...
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I've been frustrated lately with an inability to make the types of macro shots I want, the ones I can see in my mind's eye, without a proper macro lens so when a photographer friend offered me two magnifying filters to play around with until I can get my hands on a poor man's macro lens set of extension tubes from the States (I'd REALLY love to get the lens but I just can't justify it right now) I jumped at the chance to take them for a spin, even buying cut flowers especially for the occasion.
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Unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperative. My under normal circumstances almost bright enough kitchen was dark and dreary, and the work surface closest to the window was completely covered with fresh pasta waiting to be cut. (Photography is my passion, all things dough is my husband's. Yes, it's a tough life.) The vase of flowers ended up stuck in a dark corner between the sink and the refrigerator. Being an impatient sort I decided not to let this stop me and grabbed the camera and the filters "just to see what they can do". Ninety-seven very grainy ISO 1600 images later I finally conceded defeat and decided to try again tomorrow morning.
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Determined to salvage something from the photo shoot I decided to try for moody and brooding instead.
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It's not at all what I was going for originally but I like the way it turned out. It's fun when that happens. I quite enjoy the creative process in and of itself, and all the better when I'm pushing myself out of my comfort zone to create something new (to me) and different.
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More monochrome images from around the world can be seen at (the apparently newly renamed) Monochrome Weekend.

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Happy Hannukah

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Tonight we lit the first candle on the Hannukah menorah (or rather the menorahs, plural - each kid has one that they made, plus the ceramic one Jay and I were given by his mother when we first got married).
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I completely forgot to take pictures in the chaos excitement of the moment, so here's one quick snap from Maya's kindergarten Hannukah party last night.
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(Editor's note: The kindergarten Hannukah party is a Big Deal in Israel, complete with much singing, dancing, props, jelly donuts and the ubiquitious black-lit white shirts. The "light sabers" you see are from these very strange light up sheep that the children recieved as a gift. No, I don't know what sheep have to do with Hannukah either. Nothing I suspect, but light up toys of every ilk seem to appear every December to mark the coming of the Festival of Lights.) .
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PS If you're liking the new larger images I've been posting lately you can thank Rita from Coffeeshop Free Stuff - for this Blogger image size hack and for a whole host of other very cool PhotoShop and PS Elements (finally, someone who recognizes that Elements users are serious about their craft, even if they can't afford or justify buying the full version) actions, textures, tips and tricks that she actually gives away for FREE!
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Winter Sky

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Israel, November 2009 - click to enlarge

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Visit Skywatch Friday for more skies from around the world.

Window and Wall

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External wall of a reconstructed olive oil press building at the Eretz Israel Museum. Visit Window Views for more windows and doors from around the world.
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Have you entered the Around the Island Photography giveaway at The Big Piece of Cake yet? No? What are you waiting for? Around the Island's giveaway is just one in a month-long series of wonderful holiday giveaways Kate is hosting - and all by indie artists and shops. She's helping them (us! hey, I've got a store now too, I'm still a bit giddy at the idea) get the word out that there are many beautiful, unique and affordable gifts out there even in this age of big box store uniformity. Especially in this age of big box store uniformity, so head over there and do your part to spread the word about the talented little guys out there, and don't forget to leave a comment to get your giveaway entry.
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Latkes! (now with recipe)

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Breaking news: Around the Island Photography is sponsoring a giveaway! Visit Kate Coveny Hood, one of my favorite bloggers and all around do-gooding soul, over at The Big Piece of Cake for a chance to win an 8x10 print of any one of my images. Don't stop there though - Kate is running an entire MONTH of giveaways featuring those small independent artists, designers and shops whose products sometimes get lost in the Big Box Store shuffle. She's got a whole host of exciting giveaways going on all month - enter now for a chance to win fabulous prizes and discover these amazing shops (there is some SERIOUS talent over there!) for yourself.

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Click to enlarge, and visit Wordless Wednesday to see what other people aren't saying this week.

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Hannukah starts this Friday night. May your lives, and your latkes*, be deliciously light and joyful.
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* Latkes are potato pancakes fried in oil and they, along with sufganiyot (jelly donuts), are a traditional Hannukah food. That's my kind of holiday tradition.
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Several people have asked for my latke recipe. This one, slightly adapted from the one in Naomi Howland's storybook Latkes Latkes Good to Eat is our family's favorite:
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3 large potatoes
2 eggs
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbl flour
vegetable oil
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1. Peel the potatoes and rinse them in cold water. Grate very fine. Place the grated potatoes in a colander and run cold water over them to keep them from turning black. Using your hands, squeeze out all the water.
2. In a large bowl, beat the eggs. Add the onion, salt and flour (this is where families with less picky children would also add pepper and about 1 Tbl finely chopped parsley). Stir.
3. Add grated potatoes and mix well.
4. Heat a small amount of oil to sizzling in a large frying pan. Drop mixture by the large spoonful into the oil and flatten into a "pancake" shape. Cook until golden brown underneath, flip, and cook the second side until golden brown.
5. Eat right away. Latkes are traditionally served with applesauce and/or sour cream.
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White Bean Dip, or, how I nearly starved to death for want of a photo

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The mind of a blogger is a dangerous thing.
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It all started the other day when we forgot a pot of beans on the stove and cooked them into mush. Nevermind, I said. I'll just turn them into something else. I saw an interesting pasta sauce the other day that used pureed white beans. But without the scallops or the right cheese or the white wine (I was out) it didn't sound destined for success. I then remembered that a friend had brought over a pureed white bean dip a few months back that had been pretty good. Pretty good, but no wow factor. I wanted wow factor. So I headed back to my lonely writer's garret (fictitious bonus points to anyone who gets this very esoteric musical reference - hint, if you're thinking bananas you're on the right track) kitchen to see what I could do.
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Five minutes and six ingredients later I'd discovered bean dip nirvana. Seriously, this recipe turned out so well that I practically licked the bowl. (I would have too, if that big sharp blade from the food processor hadn't scared me off.) If you like white beans this is definitely the dip for you, and since it is, of course I wanted to share it with you. Which means I needed to quantify my "throw it in until it's right" recipe. And that I needed a photo.
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Now, how did I nearly starve? It's like this... (subtitled "Why I am never going to be a food stylist")
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I was about to sit down to eat my wonderfully smoky and delicious dip (love that smoked paprika) when I realized that the red peppers and red paprika would do very well for the Ruby Tuesday shot I'd been looking for.
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Okay, plate the dip in a small bowl. Dump Neatly arrange red pepper slices on a plate. Realize that red peppers on a red plate is ridiculous. Get a yellow plate. Dump Arrange, peppers on the new plate. Rearrange five or six or a million times.
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Take pictures of the whole setup.
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Concede that today's horrible weather was not exactly bathing my kitchen in lovely soft natural light. Turn on lights. Bump ISO up to 1600 in an attempt to avoid using the flash, thus making all the food appear a wonderfully appetizing shade of orangey-beige. Try again. And again.
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Rearrange peppers. Get progressively hungrier. Take a few last shots before giving up in disgust and going off to eat my lunch before it got manhandled to death.
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Eat. Ahhh... Bliss...
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It really was that good, even after the grand photo fiasco.
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Finish eating. Sneak in a few extra spoonfuls. Look at photos. Spend way too much time in photoshop, and finally end up settling for this.
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Click to enlarge (you can, but why would you on this one? If you're looking for actual good photographs go here)

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Trust me, it tastes way better than it looks. Really.
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Really.
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Robin's White Bean Dip
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1.5 cups dried beans, soaked and cooked into oblivion (very mushy) - can substitute 3C canned beans (drained)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbl olive oil
1-2 tsp smoked paprika
2-3 tsp lemon juice salt to taste
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Saute the garlic until golden. Add paprika and saute over low heat for another 2-3 minutes. .
Dump everything into the food processor. Puree until very smooth.
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That's it.
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Serve with raw vegetables. Or crackers. Or just with a spoon. Not that I'd know anything about that of course.
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Olive Press

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I was so busy with the opening of my new etsy store this week that I nearly missed this week's Monochrome Weekly. (I also still haven't quite wrapped my head around the idea that it goes live on Saturday now, not on Sunday. What can I say, I'm apparently a very slow learner...)

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We took advantage of some gorgeous weather yesterday to visit Tel Aviv's Eretz Israel Museum (which I would have enjoyed even more if the rest of the cretins who share my last name wouldn't have complained quite so much about being bored). This ancient olive press is one of many on its grounds. It would have had a giant wooden beam through it which would have been pushed around in a circle (often by an animal) to roll the stone and crush the olives. You can see an recreation of an ancient olive press on the museum's website.

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Of course our own little olive tree (a sapling growing in a pot on our patio) only gave seven olives this year (yes, seven, I didn't leave out any zeros) so I doubt we'd have much use for a press like this.
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Edited to add a link to Dina's fascinating post over at Jerusalem Hills Daily Photo about how olive oil is produced today.

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Hey look, I've got a widget!

Look right over there to the right, just under the subscription button. See? Isn't it cute? Thank you etsy for making it so easy to share my new online store with all my readers. Just click on the widget and presto, you're magically transported straight to my store. If you click on an individual photo it even brings you straight to the click and buy link for that photo. Cool, hey?

(Yes, this was a shameless plug. I won't overwhelm you with them but this is all still so new for me and I'm really excited about it!)

Israeli Sunrise, December 2009

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Visit Skywatch Friday for other skies around the world.

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I've finally listened to you all and taken the plunge -

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This image and others are available for purchase at

Around the Island Photography - my brand new etsy shop!

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Come have a look.

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Ancient Olive Tree

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Visit Wordless Wednesday to see what else people aren't saying this week.

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Stick a fork in me 'cause I am DONE!

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Done with NaBloPoMo 2009 that is! Happy November 30th everyone. What better way to end this year's daily posting frenzy than with a post that illustrates the prickly and somewhat stubborn of those who call my little corner of the world home.
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Native-born Israelis are often called sabras - from the Hebrew for prickly pear - because they are "prickly on the outside but sweet on the inside". Trite and more than a little cliche, but also more than a little true. Israelis can be brash and overly agressive but when you look a bit deeper they're a bunch of big softies. Like the hard-talking barber down the block - he talks a good game, but when Itai did his own version of a sidewalk sale last Friday this tough guy walked over, asked the price of two little matchbox cars (about 50 cents each) and handed over nearly three dollars just because Itai looked like a good kid. And then of course there's always this. Examples of Israeli kindness don't come any better than that one.
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The sabra you see here isn't a prime example of its species, but I do love it's reddish yellow coloring. Objectively though, I'd have to admit that it's a bit misshapen. The other sabras growing on the same plant were fuller and of the more common barrel shape but it was this little one that particularly caught my eye.
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It was growing on this sabra plant, tucked away under an Ottoman-era arch, remnants of what is thought to be an old agricultural storeroom. I love the way the arch has gone from ceiling to floor, with grass now growing on top instead of below. Very circle of life, isn't it?

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Gratuitous Cute Kid Pics

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Why yes, it is November 29th, which means I've been posting for 29 days straight. Why did you ask?
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NaBloPoMo - the end is in sight!
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Coastal Agriculture

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View of the greenhouses and fields belonging to Kibbutz Maagan Michael (I think) with the Mediterranean Sea in the background, as seen from the foothills of the Carmel Forest.
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I like the vintage feel that monochrome gives this image, as well as the contrast between the different geometric patterns.
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Building Facade, Tel Aviv 2009

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Another more vertigo-inducing view of this building. It had been hanging around in my archives for a while and seemed tailor-made for Carmi's Thematic Photographic, which is looking at buildings this week. It's been ages since I participated, I'm glad this week's theme gave me a way to jump back in.
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I hope you're all enjoying a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend, or for the non-Americans out there a wonderful not-a-holiday-where-we-live weekend.
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(Damn, this image looks really distorted shrunk down. View it full size for a much crisper view without any of those horrible wavy lines.)

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Oh crap I forgot to post, a/k/a Thanksgiving Israeli style

I'm leaving the house in 10 minutes to head off for a girls night Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings and won't be back until after midnight so this sorry excuse for a post is all you get. And on Thanksgiving Day too. Be grateful I'm not singing for you I suppose. That's something.

Our main Thanksgiving celebration will be on Saturday and will involve a whopping 23 people this year (thankfully NOT being hosted by me - all I need to do is bring the sweet potato souffle (done today since I needed one for tonight) and roasted cauliflower, and Jay is making rolls. We all decided years ago that trying to do a full Thanksgiving dinner on a day everyone has to work is just too tough, so it's been Saturday for at least fifteen years now. It works for us and allows up to keep up this little but very beloved bit of Americana even after twenty years away.

Speaking of which, I'm late!

I'm Stumped

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I don't have any bright ideas for today's post and I'm running out of time. Aww heck, it's nearly Thanksgiving, there can't be that many of you out there reading anyway. Right?
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*hears crickets chirping and heads off to pour herself an end of the day glass of wine*

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G'night all.
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Happy Thanksgiving

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Not quite wordless today...

Red Hibiscus

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The hibiscus are still blooming here in Israel. Not quite as many as during the height of summer but still enough to add delightful bursts of color here and there. That's actually one of my favorite things about Israeli winters - they may be cold (relatively speaking) and wet, but they are full of color. Because winter is our rainy season, it's actually peak season for many wildflowers and plants. The summers are hot and very very dry, making it easy to plan picnics or a day at the beach, but things do start to get a bit parched looking. In winter all those brown fields and hills burst into colorful bloom and new growth is everywhere. There were no roses blooming in January when I was growing up in New York, that's for sure, and certainly no wild daffodils like the ones below, blooming right now in Nahal Shimri.

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Have an image with a bit of red in it? Or a lot? Come share it for Ruby Tuesday over at Work of the Poet.
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PS Notice anything unusual about the images in this post? They're bigger! I finally learned how to override Blogger's automatic resizing thanks to CoffeeShopBlogger. So much nicer this way, although they do make me think that a two-column template might work better with the larger format images. I think you can still click on them to see the image full size as well.
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Olive tree against a stone wall

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This was really more of an olive trunk, rather than a whole tree. In fact, I'm not sure it was still growing at all. If I remember correctly it was now just a decorative piece in the garden, a semi-living sculpture if you will. To me this one looks like a figure with its arms upstretched.
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Visit Monochrome Weekly (which now goes live on Saturday nights - I'm coming in quite late to the party this week) for more black and white images from around the world.
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November 22nd. Still hanging in there with NaBloPoMo.
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White Not-A-Rose

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I don't know what this flower actually is but I love it. When I bought it the woman in the store told me its name (and no, it's not a rose) but I can't remember what it is to save my life and a search of google images didn't turn up any likely candidates either. [Commenter Abbi to the rescue - it's a lisianthus!] I'm really pleased with how soft and subtle this image turned out with the application of a few textures, too.
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On a completely unrelated note, Maya woke up this morning dancing, singing and asking for latkes - and completely fever-free* - so we danced, sang and made latkes, and then we all joined our friends for our planned hike to Shluchat Ayala and Nahal Shimri after all (the hike link is Hebrew only, but there are a few photos on the site - my own will follow eventually). It was a good choice for today - easy (which our post-slumber party and post-fever kids both needed) but very pretty and not overly crowded once we got out of the parking area, and close enough to home that soccer-obsessed Itai still made it back in time to join a friend at today's game, where the internet has just informed us that his team creamed the other guys 7-1. I expect he'll be bouncing wildly off the walls from all the excitement when he gets home.
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And just like that another weekend has come and gone. Tomorrow it's back to work in our corner of the world.
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* I suspect her fever was a reaction to the second half of the flu shot she'd received the day before. It passed quickly though and hopefully getting the shot means that the flu will also pass her (and the rest of us) by.
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Frailties and Flowers

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I've got a sick and feverish one of these (she did perk up a bit for a glass of "choco" as it's known here)
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So I didn't have time to play much with these
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I did manage to get in a decent (or at least extensive, decent remains to be seen) photo shoot this morning with the flowers I'd bought yesterday but I haven't gotten a good look at the results yet. I may find myself with some unplanned downtime to have a go tomorrow though - we're supposed to join friends for an afternoon hike but at the moment it's looking like Miss M and I will be sending the boys off to go play in the woods without us. Hopefully this is just a short-lasting reaction to the flu booster (regular flu, not H1N1) she got yesterday and not some really evil virus but either way she's definitely feeling under the weather today, to say the least. Poor thing was most upset about missing kindergarten this morning.

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PS She's eating omelettes now! (Well not NOW now, NOW now she's lying on the couch with her eyes half closed staring blankly at Spongebob, but yesterday and the day before she did.) Anyone who's been reading this blog for a while will know that among other factors at play Maya's also got enough food issues to qualify her as officially neophobic. This child leaves picky in the dust. We were told all along to focus on the other issues and the food would take care of itself eventually. It didn't really, she'd add a new food at the rate of about one or two a year (yes, a year), BUT, and this is a huge but, since she was doing so well with everything else we told her that once she turned six she'd have to start trying new foods. No more saying she doesn't like it without even tasting it. She'd have to have at least one bite of something new each day. She wouldn't have to eat more than a bite if she really didn't like it, but she would have to at least taste it. We gave her a full month to get used to the idea before we began, and so far it's working. She certainly isn't breaking any land-speed records for the rate at which she's adding new foods, but in the past few months she's added carrot sticks and red peppers (vegetables! my daughter is eating vegetables!), homemade chicken fingers made out of actual food rather than only the frozen processed ones, pizza with sauce (still no cheese, but it's not just naked crust anymore), brown rice instead of white, and now plain omelettes! She decided she wanted to try it on Wednesday evening (mid-yogurt I might add). I jumped on the initiative and made her promise that if I made it for her special that she'd eat at least three bites, and more if she liked it. Damned if she didn't eat the whole thing. She was so excited about it that she called her dad at work and her grandparents in the US to tell them! The next night she even accepted her brother's offer to make her another one.

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Maya funny: after eating the omelette Itai made she promptly declared it "the best in the world, better than god makes", then thought about it for a minute and asked "does god even make omelettes?" This kid cracks me up.

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Didn't we see a castle back there?

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Nope. Not a castle (but lots of imaginary bonus points to you if you got this fairly esoteric Rocky Horror reference). It's the crenelated top of Notre-Dame de l'Arche d'Alliance in Abu Ghosh.
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Those of you who are tiring of my Abu Ghosh images can breathe a bit easier now - I just went out and bought a bunch of flowers (including a very cool looking variegated gerbera daisy and a white not-a-rose, aka something I can't remember the name of but which looks quite like a rose) for the express purpose of photographing them tomorrow morning.

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More skies from around the world can be found here.

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Benedictine Monastery - 12th Century Frescoes and Window

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Click to better see the delicately painted figures that surround this wonderfully unusual window.

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My internet (and phone and cable) service is really acting up today so I'm going to post this as quickly as possibly before something else goes wrong. Look here for a better description of where I went and what I saw on my Abu Ghosh photowalk.
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Benedictine Monastery

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One more from Abu Ghosh. This photowalk is turning out more successful than I originally thought.

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Visit Wordless Wednesday to see what everyone else isn't saying this week.

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And then the angels sang

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I told you the other day that I'd had a really special experience on my Abu Ghosh photowalk, one that made the whole gloomy rainy day worthwhile - and here it is. These few photos are the only ones I was able to grab after the whole "left on manual focus" debacle, but the story itself shines through as the highlight of my day.
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After leaving our first stop we headed for the nearby Crusader-era Benedictine Monastery. This beautiful building, restored by the French in the 19th century, has beautiful 12th century frescoes, lovely grounds, and more relevant to my story (especially since with the rapidly approaching dusk we could barely see the frescoes) some of the most magnificent acoustics you can possibly imagine. So lovely that the church (and Notre-Dame as well) are used as venues for the semiannual (that's the one that means twice a year, right? I can never remember.) Abu Ghosh music festival.
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I walked around the church's exterior, growing more and more frustrated that we'd missed the light completely and it was too dark to shoot. Another frustrated photographer and I decided to look into the interior of the church and see if anything more promising was on offer there. When we stepped inside, to our surprise and utter delight, we heard the most magnificent singing imagineable, but where was it coming from? The chamber we were in was completely empty. We went down a set of stairs, up another set and around a corner in pursuit of the music. At one point we even heard a guitar of all things, but where on earth was it coming from?
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And then we found it. These magical, angelic sounds were coming from a large group of Philippine Catholic pilgrims. We snuck in on tiptoe, not wanting to disturb or break the spell, not daring to lift our cameras.
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That lasted as long as it took us to realize that EVERYONE in the group, and by that I mean everyone, including the 37(!) white-robed priests in the group all had their own cameras out and were shooting at a speed that would make a papparazzi pale! It was an utter free-for-all. At that point we figured it was acceptable (practically required) to immortalize the moment and raced for those cameras. I caught some GREAT shots of clergymen taking pictures from right in the middle of the choir, leaning over, under, around and in front of anyone in view. Unfortunately, that was also exactly when I forgot to put my camera back on automatic focus and not a one of those images turned out, so you'll just have to take my word for it that it was quite a scene.
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I did get these few just afterwards though - by invitation no less. They were all so excited to be there that they were actually asking to have their pictures taken, handing us their cameras to use, and even inviting us into their pictures (I lost count after being asked to pose with five different groups of people). I was trying not to use my flash because by then the nun in charge of the church was getting (rightfully) agitated so they're not the greatest photos, but what wonderful memories they hold. (And they even hold a bit of red too, enough to sneak them in as my Ruby Tuesday post - did you find it?)
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Church window

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I took this natural monochrome in the very dim interior of the Notre-Dame de L'Arche d'Alliance church in Abu Ghosh on Friday. I was taken by the way these windows high up on a wall seemed almost to "float" in the darkness but what really delighted me was something I never noticed at all until I got home and began sorting through my images from the day's photowalk. Click on the image to enlarge it and then look in the top right corner of the window to see what a fun little surprise I received.
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Once you've done that swing by Monochrome Weekly for more black and white shots from around the world.
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Notre-Dame de l'Arche d'Alliance

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Yesterday I braved some fairly dreary weather and tagged along on a photowalk sponsored by a local photography forum (that I don't participate in, my photographer-neighbor invited me along) to Abu Ghosh, an Israeli-Arab town up in the Jerusalem hills. In addition to being locally famous for humus Abu Ghosh is also home to two well-known churches which were our destination on that gloomy rainy day.
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Our first stop was Notre-Dame de L'Arche d'Alliance (Our Lady of the Ark of the Covenant), built in 1924 on the ruins of an ancient Byzantine church. Surrounding the church are gardens with wonderfully ancient and twisted olive trees and flowers of many types, including the rose you saw in yesterday's post. The church itself is well known for the large statue of the Virgin Mary on the roof (which may appear in a later post) but I was particularly taken with the mosaic work on the church's facade.
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Click to enlarge

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