Day One

I've arrived in Israel. I've been catching up on my sleep--I typically am not able to sleep much on flights--and haven't done anything exciting yet. I've noticed some interesting sights, but have yet to use my camera a lot:

• Waiting for the bus from the airport to Jerusalem was a young Orthodox couple; the husband was dressed in dark khakis and a white button-down shirt, with his fringes hanging out and his kibbe on his head, he looked like a younger version of Joel Wainwright (well, the picture of Joel without the beard). The guy had some massive holes in the soles of his shoes, but his cell phone was quite spiffy.
• On the road down the Mount of Olives this morning, I noted pilgrims from Italy, Portugal, Spain, Canada, Korea, and India. Mobs and mobs of tourists, stomping down the road, crowding into the religious sites, haggling with the local Palestinians for souvenirs. One group couldn't read the English (or Hebrew) sign on the arch to the Jewish cemetery, and stomped in there to take unobstructed pictures of the Temple Mount.
• At nearly the top of the Mount of Olives, there is a block of apartments that looks relatively new. Certainly less than 30 years old. Before those apartment buildings was there, you could stand at the top of the Mount of Olives and look down on all of the Old City, including the Temple Mount. Now, if you stand at the top of the Mount of Olives, you get a marvelous view of these apartment buildings, one with a massive Israeli flag fluttering from the top of a 30-foot pole attached to the top of the building.

Many thanks to Michael Ewers, by the way, who just by hanging out with me in Damascus taught me some useful Arabic that I would've otherwise not picked up. I even avoided telling the desk clerk at the hotel that I had a "machine" instead of a "reservation."

I did take a couple photos today, and with one shot did some tricky photo manipulation. The picture below is a HDR composite of three separate exposures, tone-mapped and then manipulated in Photoshop to mimic the appearance of Fuji Velvia film. Turned out pretty good for a spontaneous shot that was fiddled around with in post-production. I need to figure out blogger a bit more so I can do fancier stuff with my photo-posting (right, Cheryl? I aspire to your level of blog-art).