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6X12 in Jerusalem

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Pm'd you Marc. Thanks Nei1. I added a 2:3 format picture to the collection (see link below, flag pic), first shot in a while outside of the 1:2 format, felt strange! :D
 
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Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Two from yesterday, interestingly both shots of the back of synagogues (shooting from the front is so cliched! :D) in the area of Yemin Moshe just outside of the Old City Jerusalem.

Yismach Moshe Synagogue (Sephardic)


Bet Yisrael Synagogue (Ashkenazi) founded 1886.

 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Well just found out that the ivy on the building image from the post above wasn't actually saved on the computer for some reason...

Luckily it was just a curves layer and then a combination of two B&W renditions followed by a local contrast enhancement. Only took me 5 minutes to redo but no idea how that happened!

This is from today, bit heavier rendition than I usually do but it seems to suit the image. From the Nachlaot area where it's hard to walk through without getting a high from the grass smoked by the hippies who infest the area! :ROTFL:

 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Been a while, I've been busy with the summer wedding season, spent 5 weeks in the UK shooting weddings with just 5 days of that at home (3 weekends) and yes it was an absolute killer!

Took a kid out with me today, having problems at college and his father asked me if I could take him with me so that he could get some time out just relaxing and doing something different. It was a good kick up the bum for me to go out and take photos for my project after a horrendous week of all nighters catching up with the processing. I was only scouting today (should have more in the future as a result of todays scouting) but this one worked out well as a spur of the moment. Only about 20 yards from the 'cat' shot shown earlier. I like the softer contrast look in this shot.


I didn't really have a long enough lens to get the resolution I needed and I couldn't come closer and maintain the 'look' so although this was a 5 frame stitch it only ended up as 17 megapixels post crop. That is 17 megapixels after all the perspective adjusments though so it's not too bad. It's got all the sharpness and detail that's needed pretty much.
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
I've passed this scene every time I went to the airport (about 50 times in the past 1.5 years) on the way to the UK to shoot weddings. It's in the Jerusalem Forest and as I don't have a car here and it's pretty inaccessable otherwise I've never gotten round to shooting it. I've rented a car to go north to Tzfat (Safed) tomorrow scouting for a new project so I took the opportunity to shoot this. Not sure if I've achieved something or just got something out of my system. You tell me.

 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Went up to Tzfat (Safed) yesterday, the mystical and kabbalistic city of old though nowadays more a hangout of hippies and a major drug conduit from the Jordan Valley. I also went to visit some of the holy sites from the time of the Talmud. It was a scouting trip with a friend to give me an idea as to the scope of a future project up there. I did get several photos there for starters. Seperating the Tzfat of historical significance from the hippie and commercialised yeuch of today is going to be a serious challenge, far more difficult than I had expected or than the Old City and settlements of Jerusalem.

From a square in Tzfat, all within 10 metres of each other and the latter two taken from the same wall where I was sitting nursing very sore feet!

_
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Tzfat Vines: Lamp post: Kedushat Pinchas

Here is a photo taken from the Burial Site of the Mishnaic 'Tanna' Rabbi Tarfon. This is pretty much straight out of camera and converted to B&W, shot handheld @ f8, I need to go back and do it again properly. I've no idea how I would stitch a shot like this and still get that distorted look of the arch that I got using a 17mm focal length. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Please excuse the nasty posterisation, it isn't in the original file.

 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Been a while though there will be more work through the winter which looks to be as dead for bookings as last year, sigh..

I only had 5 days I could shoot in the Old City during the Sukkot Festival and due to many considerations (all procrastination!) I only got out there on the last one. 5am, just before dawn, I'm on location, I set up, take out my little 'Walkstool' and sit down to wait for someone to walk through the arch and start shooting.

Bit of an introduction, my Canon Timer Remote Controller was cut in half and a stereo jack and socket installed for the days when I shot with a EOS 50 that used the old jack for long night shooting on film. Anyway for some reason I'm not getting a good connection with my setup on location and when I tried to fiddle with it, the stereo socket falls apart in my hand leaving me with a broken cable release. I was shooting at a 1/6 iso 1600 to give you an idea why that was a problem! I also wanted to be sitting by the tripod not standing with my finger on the trigger, I wanted people looking towards the arch they were walking to not at me!

One field strip (teeth) and splice of the wires later and I'm back in business! When I was holding the bits in my hands and bemoaning my situation (no days left to get the image, woke up stupidly early, etc) I remembered that there are never any excuses for a pro. Now I'm a wedding shooter by profession but the principle was the same. I stopped feeling sorry for myself and got down to sorting out the problem. Note, nothing I've ever tried to DIY in my life has ever worked, especially trying something like this. Couldn't believe it worked!


Sukkot Dawn


Picture took a full day of wrestling with in Autopano Pro, was very difficult to get right as it's a pretty wide FOV and shot upwards. PTGUI did a perfect job straight out though by the time it had finished all the stretching and pulling necessary it left me with an 11 megapixel file and not a very sharp one at that. The Autopano version gave me 21 megapixels but needed more work in PS.
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
From today, heavy driving rain, kinda squint through almost opaque spectacles and guess through the plastic cover over your camera.

 
M

Mango

Guest
Thank you! What a wonderful experience to see such pictures.
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Now this should be a treat - most successful 24 hours of shooting I've ever done for keepers! Went up to Safed (Tzfat), the ancient kabbalistic city to do a commercial shoot that I'll share later. Took some time out for my own work at the cost of only 3 hours of sleep in the car! All around the city are the burial sites of the writers of the Mishna and the Talmud, quiet and peaceful sites where the greatest leaders and teachers of the Jewish people lived, taught and died (actually most were killed by the Romans but anyway...).

Methinks that this should be quite a treat...

1)


The Synagogue of the 'Alshich', 16th Century Biblical commentator. Only Synagogue to survive the major 18th century earthquake in Safed.
2)

Safed night life..

3)

Site where the writer of the original and main work of kabbala, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai taught. The books on the shelf are the 'Zohar' what is now known as Kabbala by most. Written over 20 years of hiding in a cave with his son from the Romans who had issued a death warrant on all those who taught the Torah about the year 80.

4)

At the monument for the Mishnaic writer, Rabbi Tarfon just after dawn.

5)

The grave site of the Talmudic writer Rabbi Krospedoi near Safed, at dawn.

6)

Very proud of this one..
At the synagogue over the burial site of Rabbi Meir (known as the miracle worked), the writer and compiler of the Mishna, the written works of the Jewish Oral Law and what the entire Talmud and all Jewish law and tradition is based on.
 
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Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Just uploaded all my pics plus a bunch of other stuff to my gallery having just become a subscriber to help support the truly best photo forum on the web. Don't know if I need to add a link or you can get it from clicking on my name or something. It was fun uploading them though. Not had a look at some of those pics for a long time since an old website with them on was pirated away from me about 2 years back.
 

Corlan F.

Subscriber Member
Ben - being among the silent followers of your project for some time now, it's nice to see all these images together here. One i've missed before for some reason but a instant favorite is the Kotel Rain... a great shot among many others!
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Thanks folks, your comments are all much appreciated!
As of now the website is now live - www.timelessjewishart.com for sales. Had a lot of logistics to work through, especially with the worldwide shipping and the fact that all the printing and mounting is being done in the UK but I live in Jerusalem and need to inspect and sign the prints! That has all been sorted out now and I'm excited to start trying to market these pictures as well as adding to the collection over the next few months and hopefully looking for some funding for the Europe project.
 

Don Libby

Well-known member
Ben - Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful images. I've been following your series since you started but just now felt compelled to say how much I like them.

I had the chance to visit Jerusalem on one of the times I flew into Israel as an Air Marshal and your images bring back that experience.

Don
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Photo from today, pouring with rain, took an hour to get the right human element in the right place at the right time, my clothes are all drying out at the moment!

Meah Shearim neighbourhood in Jerusalem, mostly slum housing and streets with an incredible level of poverty. The walls of the Jerusalem prior to the distruction of the temple stretched to within this neighbourhood and it's about two centuries old. I thought perhaps that the rain which is such a blessing in this incredibly dry country would perhaps give me a new look on what is usually a place which is more depressing than inspiring. I walked for an hour through the narrow alleyways piled with junk, buildings a century old and in a horrible state of repair and I despaired of finding a way to photograph it in a way which would both be true to what the neighbourhood is, but also show beauty.

I was almost back to where I'd started when I saw this scene, the gates of a relatively newly built synagogue framing the stairways and buildings of the neighbourhood.

I hope this works, especially for those who have walked those streets...

 
C

Chris_R

Guest
Ben,

Wonderful images and the format works well. Thank you for sharing.

Best Regards
Chris
 

gogopix

Subscriber
OK, opinions please. These are two 'throwaway' shots, stuff that I thought of doing but wasn't particularly excited about. Went shooting yesterday to redo a shot that needed better lighting, the light was perfect, blue skies, fluffy clouds and bright even lighting. Anyway I get there and find out that they've erected scaffolding across some 300 meters of the outside wall of the Old City, exactly where I wanted to shoot. Probably be up there for a while as well :(, anyway, went into the city and took these two shots. Opinions please.


Thinking of going back and doing it again with someone on the path this time.


Technically the composition is wrong for just about every reason under the sun but I'm not sure if it doesn't work (just) anyway.

Oh well...
I'm not sure the "rules" shouldn't be derived from successes, and that shot IS a success!

I REALLY like the narrative content of your work. I also favour cityscapes or lanscapes with a story.

Are you considering publishing a book?

Victor
 
T

tokengirl

Guest
Ben,

This is such a wonderful series. I admire your consistency of style which complements the theme so well.

This is a book in the making. I would definitely buy it.
 

Ben Rubinstein

Active member
Thank you very much folks! I kept the first and killed the 2nd of those Gogopix, as always, when I see it again I wonder if it should be resurrected...
 
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