[Dean's World] Ron Coleman: Israel, and back

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Posted by Ron Coleman:
Israel, and back
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1170611932.shtml


            [1]Go in Peace sign upon leaving Ramat Beit Shemesh 

   My pictures from last week's trip to Israel are now all up on Flickr,
   and are about as ready as they'll ever be.

   I could have provided you with some great photojournalism but I was
   prevented by two considerations. One was that although I brought my
   "good" camera, I really did not want this experience to be a
   "touristy" one, so I mostly kept it at my friends' apartment or in my
   bag. I wanted some level of authentic experience. Most of the
   pictures, therefore, were taken with my BlackBerry, which is by modern
   lights a very crude camera. But the pictures are pretty good.

   The second factor was that I could not bring myself to casually
   utilizing other real people as subjects of my photography, for my own
   purposes -- something writers and journalists do all the time; but
   with photographs it is far more personal. I have been that other
   person -- the "subject" or "local color" for someone else's vacation
   snaps -- such as when a tour bus drives past me in Manhattan, and I am
   not so sure everyone likes that experience. It just seems too
   self-indulgent for me, or at least it did this time around.

   I wish I could have had solely a photography vacation, though. The
   Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem (the "Rova") alone could
   take up many days with a good camera -- it is a cultural, historical,
   archeaological and architectural wonderland, even if you only do
   landscapes, still lifes, and leave people to their own privacy. What's
   amazing to me is that I lived there for six months as a yeshiva
   student and never really took full advantage of it, as is typical of
   young people. (I wish I could say the reason was because of my
   academic and spiritual diligence, but it wasn't.) But the good thing
   is that the most photogenic aspects of the Rova tend to stay the same
   for a long, long time.

References

   1. http://www.flickr.com/photos/roncoleman/377528173/