While hiking Ein Ovdat- an actual oasis in the Negev desert, I had the opportunity to photograph one of the rare locations where water meets desert on a regular basis. This oasis though has no palm trees, and no vast sand dunes. The structure of the area is actually a deep and rocky canyon, allowing for some very interesting composition including the rock surface, water, sky and some local flora and fauna.

This location is actually very accessible and a highly recommended visit if you’re in the area. A short fifteen minute walk from the car park. All the charm of a real desert oasis, this time- without the adventure. Well, unless the car’s air conditioning is out of order…

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Arriving to the market was definitely not a disappointment, it has about 500 stands, covering everything from food, home appliances, clothes, shoes, music and more. I started wondering around, waiting for some nice photo opportunities.

Photo opportunities in a market are plentiful, but I did encounter two main challenges. The first was picking human subjects- walking around with an SLR isn’t very low profile, and while some people don’t mind it at all, a lot will prefer to stay out of your frame, and will either politely move away or simply tell you so. One of the solutions was to focus on hands and transactions,  the other was to put people in the background.

Less challenging but just as satisfying, some of the commodities in the market make for excellent photographic subject, and when it comes to fruit and vegetables, they hardly ever protest. Color and textures of different products are easily accessible and supply great compositions to play with.

As for the gear, I was using my solid entry level Olympus e-420 with its 14-45 kit lens. I’d recommend sticking to either your mid range zoom lens or switch to a wider one. If you want to come closer to an object, you can just walk up, and using a tele-lens will limit your wide angle snap shots.

Markets to give a glimpse into local culture, and if you don’t find cultural enlightenment, you can at least catch a glimpse of the local commodities. I have to say my strongest memories from the Den Haag market were food, and shoes.

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“Rosh Hanikra”, freely translated to “head of the grottoes” is in my opinion a must visit for photographers staying or visiting in Israel. The natural process, described in the official site of Rosh Hanikra, resulted in a complex of under ground grottoes with internal halls and bays opening towards the see. The water in the calm sea of September and October are crystal clear and have a brilliant blue-turquoise color.

The combination of water, rock and the penetrating sunlight make a great mix to play with. Notice though, that without a tripod and a camera that enables to control exposure time (fully manual or shutter priority settings) good results will be much more of a challenge.

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If I’ll try to define the common photographic attractions found in cathedrals, such as Notre Dame and others- these will be the objects that will always catch my eye: Stained glass art, the architectural scale of these usually very impressive structures, stone figures and art icons and of course- the general atmosphere of the cathedral.

I started taking pictures in the Notre Dame cathedral using a tripod, as lighting conditions are far from ideal, and I wanted to avoid very high ISO settings and the accompanied “digital noise”. For whatever reasons, I was prohibited from using my tripod, making the job of capturing the architecture of the cathedral very difficult.

With, I turned to the objects in Notre Dame I could photograph more easily, this series features one image from the outside, a snapshot I took with my pocket camera, and two shots from the inside, trying to demonstrate some of the unique features and atmosphere that can be found in the Cathedral of Notre Dame.

The legendary hunchback, unfortunately, remained out of sight.

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Taking advantage of the rooftop of the local tourism office and a few restaurants, the course was built in a radical way. Bridge constructions and truckloads of dirt were used to form a crazy run, where jumping off the roofs has been acknowledged for the first time as an integral part of competitive biking.

The local tourism office had granted me with a press pass, as I will cover this event on an Israeli mountain biking magazine, and possible some other resources- that was very helpful in getting these images:

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