Of all the things I forgot to pack, for my recent Israel visit with family, was my camera! The pocketable Ricoh would have been ideal but instead I thought I’d have to make do with my creaky iPhone 6s until my brother-in-law Sherwood gifted me his Canon EOS 5D and a selection of lenses. These days his sight is severely compromised which is especially sad given that he was once a professional photographer with a very keen eye and hence a hard act to follow. It made me wonder if this is how the prophet Elisha must have felt, although he was far better prepared:
Elisha then picked up Elijah’s cloak that had fallen from him and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. ~2 Kings 2:13
And one of my first outings with the camera was to the river Jordan at the baptismal sight of Yardenit. However, the picture Style Editor was set to too high a saturation on ‘Landscape’ mode but it gave a painterly first sight of the Jordan river, in late afternoon sun
Fortuitously a group of Mexican pilgrims suddenly arrived for their Baptism, I ventured closer but also had to make use of the EF 28-135mm zoom lens rather then be too invasive on this private gathering. Post camera I converted the shots to black and white as I did not have time to edit the colour settings there and then. Also they were cropped to varying degrees and the extent of clarity remaining is testament to a good lens which also has an image stabilization switch!,
Introspectives – thinking out loud with an aim to improve and learn more about photography and in this case, start to become more familiar with the Canon camera and lens. Hence the images are not always for show.
PoetryPix 