My name is Tal. I’m an amateur photographer, one in particular which hasn’t dedicated enough time to this hobby.

Besides holding a camera now and then when I was a younger kid (now I’m just an older kid), my passion for photography began, and still remains- underwater. With Scuba-diving being a great passion of mine, I began looking for a way to enhance my diving experience. A simple film Sea&Sea MX5 point and shoot was quickly replaced with an Olympus C-4000 digital and a matching underwater case, later upgraded to another Olympus, the very successful “semi-SLR” C-8080.

I have recently noticed, that even with an extensive history of mountain biking, off-road trips, hikes and travels- most of my photography was still underwater. This isn’t a bad thing at all, but I’ve decided to dedicate a bit more time and energy to photography.

For this, I decided on two immediate actions. The first, simply put, is to photograph more often and in different environments and circumstances. The second, you are just reading.

I decided to form a Blog\website, that will not only display my own work, thoughts and rants, but will also allow anyone with a passion for photography to display something of his own.

“The Wide Lens” seemed like an appropriate name. Featuring not only a technical term from the world of photography, but more importantly- a concept that has an emphasis on a wide spectrum of photography. This means that it doesn’t matter if you’re an amateur or a professional photographer, or what is your favorite discipline in photography – all images and the stories behind them are welcome. I hope this post, and the ‘about’ and Q&A pages should answer what this place is all about, if you have any other questions or suggestions, drop a line to thewidelens@gmail.com

To begin with a photography website of my own, I decided to first generate an appropriate banner- visuals come first.

Post update: Since writing this, I’ve done some changes with the site appearance. The header image now refreshes each time you move to a different page. And the original banner shown here is absent. If you’ll pay close attention, it’s actually still around as the website’s favicon (the little small icon to distinguish the tab).

The concept was simple- a banner for “The Wide Lens” should show a wide lens!

After a short drive to borrow a tripod from my brother, I headed for the beach at sunset.

The C-8080 with its wide conversion lens was set up on the tripod, facing the sea, the sunset and a local mosque called “Sidni-Ali”. The camera wasn’t set up to take a picture, but to model. The banner was created using my pocket camera – Cannon IXUS 850, which does a great job so far.

With the sun about to set below the horizon within minutes, I only had a few tries, below is the one that was selected to be used as The Wide Lens banner – cropped and displayed on the top of the page.

Welcome to The Wide Lens.