Lorelle has been collecting quotes since she first began to read, and has quite a collection. We have incorporated the most appropriate quotes from her collection and research into our pages where appropriate and enjoyable. We’ve had a lot of requests to share these, so we’ve gathered them together in a series of pages for you to peruse. The quotes from within our pages cover nature and photography, travel, and life in general. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.
Nature Quotes
Nature abhors annihilation.
Cicero (BC 106-43)
Let us permit nature to have her way; she understands her business better than we do.
Montaigne (1533-1592)
Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
Bacon (1561-1626)
Each flower is a soul opening out to nature.
Gerard de Nerval
…If the beasts were gone, we would die from a great loneliness of spirit.
Chief Seattle
The mountains are the beginning and end of all natural scenery.
John Ruskin
Mountains are a feeling but the hum of human cities is a torture.
Byron
Whenever we go in the mountains, or indeed in any of God’s wild fields, we find more than we seek.
John Muir
Consider the sea’s listless chime; time’s self it is, made audible.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.
Benjamin Disraeli
One joy dispels a hundred cares.
Confucius
The flowers of all our tomorrows are in the seeds of today.
Chinese proverb
Flowers are the earth’s laughter.
Emerson
Teach us delight in simple things.
Rudyard Kipling
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
Lao Tse
There’s enough in this world for every man’s need but not for every man’s greed.
Gandhi
In wildness is the preservation of the world.
Thoreau
Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.
Aldo Leopold
Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow stong.
Winston Churchill
You must teach our children that the ground beneath their feet is the ashes of your grandfathers. So that they will respect the land, tell your children that the earth is rich with the lives of our kin. Teach your children what we have taught our children, that the earth is our mother. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the earth. If men spit upon the ground, they spit upon themselves. This we know: The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which units one family. All things are connected.
Inspired by Chief Seattle’s reply to the ‘Great White Chief’ in Washington in 1854 on the occasion of an offer of an Indian ‘reservation’ in exchange for a large area of Indian land.
The shadow’s the thing. Outside, shadows are blue, I read, because they are lighted by the blue sky and not the yellow sun. Their blueness bespeaks infinitesimal particles scattered down infinitesimal distances. Muslims, whose religion bans representational art as idolatrous, don’t observe the rule strictly; but they do forbid sculpture, because it casts a shadow. So shadows define the real….
Anne Dillard Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Wildlife needs clutter and chaos. It needs options and opportunities. It needs the slow centuries of growth, nurture, disturbance and decline that produces a complex and unique forest community.
David Middleton, Ancient Growth
Our ways are different from your ways. The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man. But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand. There is no quiet place in the white man’s cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect’s wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand.
The clatter only seems to insult the ears. And what is there to life if a man cannot hear the lonely cry of the whippoorwill or the arguments of the frogs around a pond at night. I am a red man and do not understand.
The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of a pond, and the smell of the wind itself, cleaned by a midday rain, or scented with the pinon pine. The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath – the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath.
The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench.
Chief Seattle’s reply to the ‘Great White Chief’ in Washington in 1854 on the occasion of an offer of an Indian ‘reservation’ in exchange for a large area of Indian land.
Nature, like a kind and smiling mother, lends herself to our dreams and cherishes our fancies.
Victor Hugo (1802-1885)
Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep.
Emerson (1803-1882)
The forest is the poor man’s overcoat.
New England Proverb
Today I have grown taller from walking with the trees.
Karle Wilson
In those vernal seasons of the year when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth.
Milton (1608-1674)
Animals are such agreeable friends, they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
George Eliot
Man’s rich with little, were his judgement true; Nature is frugal, and her wants are few; These few wants answer’d bring sincere delights; But fools create themselves new appetites.
Young (1683-1765)
Nature I loved, and next to Nature, Art.
Landor (1775-1864)
Nature Photography Quotes
The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price. If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever I would stagger barefoot across a hundred deserts after any lunatic at all. But although the pearl may be found, it may not be sought. The literature of illumination reveals this above all: although it comes to those who wait for it, it is always, even to the more practiced and adept, a gift and a total surprise.
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
To the scientist, light is not only a messenger but also a tool, a tool of limitless versatility, which can be used to uncover the mysteries of the atom and of the stars.
Michael I. Sobel
The least you can do is be there.
Anne Dillard
Wandering through the world as I do, I often forget to watch my feet. When I stop to watch them, I often find camouflaged, wondrous things. Insects, lizards, butterflies, ants, flowers….it makes me walk a little more carefully and slowly now.
Lorelle VanFossen, Personal Journal
An artist chooses his subjects; that is his way of praising…Ultimately, his work is merely a magnifying glass that he offers anyone who looks his way.
Friedreich Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom
The more you are able to forget your equipment, the more time you have to concentrate on the subject and on the composition. The camera should become an extension of your eye, nothing else.
Ernst Haas, The Creation
The camera always points both ways. In expressing the subject, you also express yourself.
Freeman Patterson
…the immense variety that nature creates emerges from the working and reworking of only a few formal themes. Those limitations on nature bring harmony and beauty to the natural world.
Peter Stevens, Patterns in Nature
The window is not the view; the window allows the view.
Hugh Prather, Notes on Love and Courage
The block of granite which was an obstacle in the path of the weak, becomes a steppingstone in the path of the strong.
Carlyle (1795-1881)
If you only photograph when you feel like it…you’ll never be totally successful as a photographer.
Freeman Patterson
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
Helen Keller
The idea that creativity bubbles up from a magical well is just another myth, among many, about highly creative people and their work.
David Perkins – Howard
Every problem contains the seeds of its own solution.
Stanley Arnold
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Albert Einstein
A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions.
Oliver Wendell
Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it; boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Goethe
Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.
Henri Poincare (1854-1912)
Unlike a camera, the eye takes apart the visual image into component parts that are of importance to the animal.
Inside the Brain
When you photograph something, don’t accept it as the end result; there’s always a next step. But repeat something only if you can improve on it. Otherwise, you must move on. A photographer must change to show change, and it is as much the photographer’s challenge to show change as it is to preserve what is. A picture must be a question as well as an answer.
Ernst Haas
Thirty-six satisfactory exposures on a roll means a photographer is not trying anything new.
Freeman Patterson
Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts: the sight of the deep-blue sky, and the clustering stars above, seem to impart a quiet in the mind.
Johnathan Edwards (1703-1758)
Nature goes on her way, and all that to us seems an expectation is really according to order.
Goethe (1749-1832)
Nature pleases, attracts, delights, merely because it is nature. We recognize in it an Infinite Power.
Karl Wilhelm Humboldt (1767-1835)
Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.
Wordsworth (1770-1850)
The less descriptive the photo, the more stimulating it is for the imagination. The less information, the more suggestion; the less prose, the more poetry.
Ernst Haas
A photography image creates a story that was never intended to be told. It is a lie telling the truth, a yes and no at the same time, an is and an is not.
Ernst Haas
Many believe the camera is a shield. I believe it’s an invitation to get closer.
Nevada Wier, Travel photographer
For what has made the sage or poet write, But the fair paradise of Nature’s light.
Keats (1795-1821)
Travel photography and skiing have a lot in common: uneven terrain and the challenge of reacting to ‘uneven terrain’.
Lisl Dennis, Travel photographer
One of life’s most fulfilling moments occurs in that split second when the familiar is suddenly transformed into the dazzling aura of the profoundly new…These breakthroughs are too infrequent, more uncommon than common; and we are mired most of the time in the mundane and the trivial. The shocker: what seems mundane and trivial is the very stuff that discovery is made of. The one difference is our perspective, our readiness to put the pieces together in an entirely new way and to see patterns where only shadows appeared just a moment before.
Edward B. Lindaman, Thinking in Future Tense
My work is always a bit ahead of my ability to comprehend it. As a photographer, it is very important for me to listen to the work, for it will always tell where to go next.
Ralph Gibson
Travel photography seems to be a very intellectual process but it’s really an emotional experience.
Lisl Dennis, Travel photographer
And hark! How blithe the thristle sings! He, too, is no mean preacher: Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher.
Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Many go through the meadow, but few see the flowers in it.
Emerson
Whatever you are from nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else, and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.
Syndey Smith (1771-1845)
I look like a photographer. I keep my antennae out and pay attention. I move slowly and work quickly. I want to be an active observer not a passive bystander. It breaks down the barriers because here I am, looking like I just landed from Mars with all this equipment on me, and I’m cute and funny and make them laugh as I should. I build a rapport at that moment.
Nevada Wier, Travel photographer
Help Nature and work on with her; and Nature will regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance. And she will open wide before thee the portals of her secret chambers, lay bare before thy gaze the treasures hidden in the depths of her pure virgin bosom.
H.P. Blavatsky (1831-1891)
Art is the child of Nature; yes, her darling child in whom we trace The features of the mother’s face, Her aspect and her attitude.
Longfellow (1819-1892)
Birds, the free tenants of land, air, and ocean, their forms all symmetry, their motions grace…
James Montgomery
If park fees were kept by the park how would we be able to pay for the graft that we are now funding? I would gladly pay for double at each park if the money would stay with the park. In my opinion, most rangers are underpaid and under appreciated. We are fortunate they love what they do because otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to attract people with their education level at the salaries the government pays. In a moment of insanity, I thought we should reduce government graft and waste and put the money in our parks. If we lose them I’m afraid they will be gone forever. Maybe it isn’t such an insane thought after all.
Eugene Bantekas, nature photographer
The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality.
Goethe (1749-1832)
Of landscapes, as of people, one becomes more tolerant after one’s twentieth year…We learn to look at them, not in the flat but in depth, as things to be burrowed into. It is not merely a question of lines and colours but of smells, sounds and tastes as well…
C.S. Lewis, C.S. Lewis: Images of His World
The object of art is to crystallize emotion into thought, and then fix it in form.
Francois Delsarte (1811-1871)
A work of art is a corner of creation seen through a temperament.
Emile Zola (1840-1902)
What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself.
Willa Cather (1876-1947)
A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.
Diane Arbus (1923-1971)
The Meaning of Life is to see.
Hui Neng
Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.
Lubbock (1834-1913)
The appearance and disappearance of the Universe are pictured as an out-breathing and inbreathing of ‘the Great Breath,’ which is eternal, and which, being Motion, is one of the three aspects of the Absolute – Abstract Space and Duration being the other two.
H.P. Blavatsky (1831-1891)
Breath it all in and let it all out.
Dewitt Jones
An animals wariness is it’s key to survival and critical to the protection of it’s young. The Photographers Code of Ethics prohibits harassing, endangering or interfering with the natural life cycle of wild animals. Therefore, we choose to work in National Parks, wildlife viewing areas and occassionaly with hand raised subjects such as this wolf. In this way, we can share the antics and spirit of relaxed, unstressed animals without endangering the animal or it’s young.
Leo Keeler, Alaska Photographer
A picture is a poem without words.
Confucius (BC 551-479)
There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising a new invention, creating a vast industry. Work is the great redeemer. It has therapeutic value. It brings happiness.
Henry Miller (1891-1980)
A lot of people feel guilty about photographing people and take the picture and run. Why? I see people notice me and I drop the camera and hang out a while. Then I take some more pictures. You have to pull down the camera and keep eye contact. You have to become a person behind the black box.
Nevada Wier, Travel photographer
I can’t be startled by the unexpected. I have to be looking for it and prepared for it to happen.
Nevada Wier, Travel photographer
As little children we all start out with eyes close to the ground, seeing, feeling, smelling, exploring, and learning. Seeing with a camera is the best way I have found to get close to the earth again.
Earnest Braun, Living Water
I shut my eyes in order to see.
Paul Gauguin
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it wihin us or we find it not.
Unknown Author
The wonderful thing about the Smokies, in my opinon, are their accessability. When I go out west I look at the mountains and say “beautiful”, but I can’t feel like I know them. They are just too big. I admire them from a distance. With the Smokies, I can walk from one end to the other if I want, and from the bottom to the top. They are on a scale that is “knowable”. They are “comfortable”. And they are alive with more growing green stuff than you can shake a stick at.
David Vruggink, nature photographer
Photography is many things for me – it is my art form, it is the way I make my living. Most of all, it is a discipline that forces me to see deeply, not just in my photographs, but in my life as well.
Dewitt Jones, nature photographer
Creativity is dangerous…Its pleasure is not the comfort of the safe harbor, but the thrill of the reaching sail.
Robert Grudin, The Grace of Great Things
There is a vitality…translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you…this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.
Martha Graham
One should never forget that seeing and producing an effect of nature is not a matter of intellect, but of feeling…I avoid being conventional as much as possible.
Carl Frieseke
As long as I live, I’ll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. I’ll interpret the rocks, learn the language of flood, storm, and avalance. Ill acquaint myself with the glaciers and wild gardens, and get as near the heart of the world as I can.
John Muir
The seeing is always more important that the photograph.
Dewitt Jones, nature photographer
If a photographer really expects to produce great work, they must, just like musicians, be prepared to practice their craft every day. EVERY DAY. This does not mean one has to take pictures every day, but one must at least practice seeing every day.
David Bayles
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
Rumi
When I find myself stopping to think I know I’m on the wrong track.
Edward Weston
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
Do not fear mistakes – there are none.
Miles Davis
Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be fish.
Ovid
Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.
Johnathan Swift
The similarity between Van Gogh, Haiku poetry, and good photography is the concern for morality.
Dennis Stock
The fault with most photographers is that they spend 1/60th of a second making a photograph and the rest of their life explaining it.
Richard Brown
That which fills my heart and sole – Must be expressed in drawings and pictures – I am in a rage of work.
Vincent Van Gogh
..light animates. It’s a soothing, therapeutic, exciting, thrilling, mutable force, and it plays itself out very directly on me, on my emotions.
Sam Abell
Simplify, simplify…simplify!
Harald Sund, photographer
Photographs take me.
Michael Bishop
Photography as the unique ability to communicate and articulate on a visual level unequalled by the written word. Still photography is reflective and emotional, words and even cinema tend to be more intellectual and cerebral; less from the heart.
Chris Rainier
Nature is not only what is visible to the eye – it shows the inner images of the soul – the images on the back side of the eyes.
Edvard Munch
A photo is an expression of an impression.
Ernst Haas
An artist chooses which subjects to portray; this is a way of praising…utlimately, one’s work is merely a magnifying glass offered anyone looking in our direction.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The technical aspects of design…can be produced efficiently by a computer – but design with delight, design with a glow, cannot.
Robert Sommer, The Mind’s Eye
One day a student asked his master, ‘What is the most diffiucult part of painting?’ He replied, ‘The part of the paper where nothing is painted….’
Quoted from Essential Zen, edited by K. Tanahashi and T.D. Scheider
Every artist is not a special kind of person. Every person is a special kind of artist.
Eric Gill
Each of us on earth is but a mosaic of a picture we will never see.
Ernst Haas
The less descriptive the photo, the more stimulating it is for the imagination. The less information, the more suggestion; the less prose, the more poetry.
Ernst Haas
The senses are poets.
Quote from L. Leshan and H. Margenau’s Einstein’s Space and Van Gogh’s Sky
Standing in a mountain stream I wonder why it is no one can speak as purely as the water sounds against the rock.
Ueshiba
The best equipment? Imagination!
Duane Michals
Creativity is not a possension; it is the interchange between ourselves and our world. Instinctively, we know communication is communion, and in the deepest sense we are inexorably bound not only to trees, but to rocks, the air, the water – to everything in the world around us.
James Baker quoted in John Sexton’s Listen to the Trees
In the beginner’s mind there are many possiblilities, but in the expert’s there are few.
Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.
Thoreau
No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen.
Minor White
Science tends to be more an intellectual exercise, tending to separate the observer from the observed. Art tends to intergrate the subject and the observer.
Story Musgrave
Good taste was always the worst enemy of art.
Marcel Duchamp
…the thing that art does for life is to clean it, to strip it to form.
Robert Frost
The closer one looks the farther one sees.
David Cavagnaro
You are lost the instant you know what the result will be.
Juan Gris
The purpose of art…is life, instensified, brilliant life.
Alain Arias-Mission
We are a landscape of all that we experience.
Noguchi
Art is the making of things well.
Coomaraswamy
There is no must in art because art is free.
Kandinsky
Sell your cleverness and buy enchantment.
Rumi
For me, the waiting is a time of preparation, a time of centering, a time of allowing the expected and the unexpected to manifest, and above all, a time of stillness.
J.D. Marston
There are places and moments in which one is so completely alone that one sees the world entire.
Jules Renard
Good photographic compositiion is merely the strongest way of seeing.
Edward Weston
The day, water, sun, moon, night – I do not have to purchase these with money.
Plautus
There is just as much beauty visible to us in the landscape as we are prepared to appreciate – not a grain more.
Thoreau
Lorelle and fellow Uplan student, Doris, dressed up and celebrated Purim in Israel. Purim is not so much a religious holiday as a bible story holiday and it resembled Halloween as everyone dresses up in costumes. We were clowns. Unfortunately, Lorelle got a rash from the lipstick that left a rash in the shape of the smile on her face for two weeks.
Lorelle’s Hebrew class on their last day. We had a huge party with dancing to Spanish popular music and teaching our teacher, Dina, to Salsa.
Lorelle’s Hebrew Teacher, Dina, celebrating the last day of class. She was certainly a joy to work with, making the task of learning such a hard language fun and enjoyable. She has since moved back to the United States where she lived for almost 20 years before returning to her homeland for a few years.
On a tour in Israel to the north and the Golan heights, another traveler took this picture of us at the Lebanon Border with Israel. A couple weeks later this became a hot spot of violence and media as Israel pulled out of Lebanon early, surprising everyone. For those who lived over 30 years in a “neutral zone”, with many of the citizens coming and going across the border to jobs in the nearby towns as there was little or no work to be had for many in Lebanon, this was very difficult and many lost their jobs when they couldn’t cross the border any more.
A plaque is set up at the Lebanese/Israel border honoring those who died to protect this border. During the Six Day Way, much of the Arab world attacked Israel, including the Palestinians. While Israel was sort of surprised – okay, on several fronts they were really surprised – being attacked by Egypt from the south, Jordan from the east, Syria from the northeast, and Lebanon from the north, well, that was a lot to deal with. And Israel stomped some serious buns. They captured a good part of south Lebanon, part of Syria, a good chunk of Jordan, including all of Jerusalem, and the entire Sinai Penisula, which is like capturing Texas. That’s no small chunk of change. To keep peace with Egypt, they gave back the Sinai. To keep peace with Jordan, they gave back most, but not all of the “West Bank”. To keep peace with Lebanon, they gave back a little, but not much. To keep peace with Syria, Egypt and Jordan told King Hussian to shut up. To keep peace with the Palestinians, they gave them areas in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, gave the rest of them to Jordan, who took them semi-willingly (the Palestinians have long been considered the bottom of the barrel in the Arab world, but they have rights, too.), and let the rest leave or be put into refuge camps. From a non-political perspective, Israel did more than it had to to keep the peace. How many countries who conquer lands give them back? That’s not traditional thinking. And no matter what your perspective on the “Middle East situation”, you have to admit that Israel kicked some serious butt to win that much land in six days. Sure they had some help, but honestly, when was the last time you heard of a war doing so much in such a little bit of time. Can’t help but be a little impressed, right? Okay, sorta right.
This memorial marks the spot where Itzak Rabin was assasinated. He had just given a speech on peace in the Middle East and the hope that he had that it would be finalized with the help of US President Bill Clinton within the next few weeks or so. The presentation took place from the big deck of the municipality overlooking a great square which is now named for the late Prime Minister of Israel. As he left the stage and shook hands with people waiting there as he moved towards his car, under full but lax security, a Jewish man came at him with a gun and shot him, injuring others too. He was caught and is still in jail, but Prime Minister Rabin was pronounced dead soon after. The crowd was in shock and the spot became an instant memorial as people placed flowers and candles there.
This is the street we live on in Tel Aviv. It’s called Dubnov, named after a famous Jewish poet who came here to Israel and helped create the State of Israel. We live on a beautiful city garden park filled with beautiful trees from all over the world, and a lovely fountain, as well as a small children’s park. The homes lining the nearby streets are old homes, but not the oldest in the city. Built mostly in the early 1950s, the original residents still live here with caretakers, or they have been rented out to middle aged folk. Most of the people still care about their gardens and plants in the building grounds and courtyards, as well as from their balconies. The colors are ablaze throughout much of the year with the temperate heat and humidity. It’s a peaceful and lovely neighborhood.
Signs of peace and commercialism are part of the day-to-day building decorations in Tel Aviv and throughout Israel. One large sign declares Israel will not give back the Golan heights taken by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967. The sign reminds many that too much land won in that war and others have been returned as a price for peace. The flag of Israel hangs in the window of many homes and off balconies. Blatant patriotism is the norm here in Israel.
In Kikkar Rabin (Rabin Square) a block from our home in Tel Aviv, not long after the current Intifada began a hunger protest group set up a tent in the square and started counting the dead on a huge sign where all the traffic driving by could see it. Watching the number go up day after day, it’s unnerving. They also “planted” white plastic silouettes representing the dead in flower pots with sand. Some people brought flowers and little toys and ornaments to place in the pot. We watched this 
growing crowd of white human outlines grow as the weeks turned into months. After three months the tent and silouettes were removed. I wonder, with the number now over 500, how much of the square would be filled with the potted people now?
Tucked away in a rarely visited spot along the Via Dolorosa in the old city of Jerusalem is the birthplace of the mother of Jesus, Mary. This is her parent’s home, located now in the basement of an apartment building near Lion’s Gate, the start of Via Dolorosa.
They say you can’t come to the Middle East without riding a camel, but we’re here to tell you that you can. But we did it anyway. It was fun. Mamshit Camel Ranch is open to tourists on organized tours and is located in the south of Israel, in the northern reaches of the Negev. You ride a camel through the wadis (valleys) and get some very interesting tips and information on how camels are used in the desert, then partake in a “true” Beduion style lunch. I’m not sure how true it was, but it was enjoyable. If you have nothing else to do for a day in Israel, this could be a great brainless adventure. Check with United Tours or Egged Tours for information. Great for the kids.
Going overseas means getting used to money that is different from our own. We have really grown to like the Israeli Sheqel (or Shekel) as each denomination is very distinct in colors from the others and color coded on the ends so you can quickly tell which bill is for which amount. Red is 20, orange is 50, and blue is 100. Currently, the sheqel is about 4 to the US Dollar.
Visiting Israel is like stepping back into time, but not always through the footsteps people associate with Israel. People associate religion with Israel, but I found older history in Israel overlooked by tourists. In the northwest of Israel you will find the Carmel Mountains. In the foothills facing the sea, not far from the town of Zikhron Ya’akov, you will find the Carmel Caves, better known as Hahal Me’arot Nature Reserve. These caves represent more than 150,000 years of continuous human occupation and, basically, civilization. If you want to really step back through time, this is the place. Excavated in the 1920’s by an all female archaeological team led by Dorothy Garrod of Englad. They found both Homo sapien and Neanderthral skeletons here, evidence that both lived here. This raises all kinds of questions about the relationship between the two groups and whether or not they lived together simultaneously. There is a well done movie in the largest cave, the Nahal, which gives you the feeling of really stepping back in time to understand what life was like by the earliest people on the planet. And you think you have problems living today? Imagine being threatened by great monster creatures and being dependent not on whether or not the local grocery store is open but by the weather conditions. I would put this near the top of things to explore in Israel. It only takes an hour or two and is well worth it.
There are a lot of emotions associated with visiting the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. On one hand it is another step back in time by its symbol of the ancient Jewish Temple destroyed not long after Jesus Christ walked through it throwing money changers out of the temple, as well as its symbolic nature to the Jews. On the other, it is a circus to see the bobbing and weaving of the different Jewish sects and how they worship and pray at the wall. The segregation of men and women still cracks me up. Men on one side (the larger side by the way) and women crammed into the other side with a flimsy wall between them. From another perspective it is a work of art as all the visitors wear all kinds of clothing and colors from jeans and t-shirts promoting a favorite Hard Rock Cafe to punkers with purple hair, to Ashkenazi Jews in their colorful scarfs and prayer shawls to Haradim Jews in their clothing perserved from the Ghettos of Poland in heavy wool fabrics of black and darker black with black mink or felt hats strapped to their heads. It’s a parade.
Around the old city of Jerusalem are many burial grounds, both for the Jews and the Arabs – of all religions. Some are maintained in glorious fashion while others are left as abandoned historical ruins. They help give Jerusalem, at least in the old parts of the city, the air of ancient history.
I started teaching English to a couple of Russians here in Tel Aviv in the Fall of 2000. Alex Ivershin was my first student. Of course, Lorelle don’t do nothing normal, so our teaching classes involve taking walks, shopping, and lots of just plain silliness. Here, we went to the Post Office to pick up a package from Lorelle’s mother for Christmas. Alex holds it proudly, excited about every opportunity to practice English that he can get.
A fellow passenger sent us this picture, a moment of togetherness as we sailed across the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Kinneret, in Israel. The Kinneret is a major source of water for Israel. The source, the Jordan River, gets its water from the snows of Mt. Hermon which once was in Syrian hands and after the Six Day War, it now belongs to Israel. Unfortunately, the rest of the water for the lake comes from rain. The past few years have been horrible for rain levels. Terrible drought conditions keep the water level of the lake low, but the biggest problem is the tremendous impact of the country’s citizens.
Monday, Time Magazine calls you for a photograph of an American Alligator with his eyes poking out from the water. They have to have it by Wednesday. You hang up the phone and stand in your once-a-bedroom-now-an-office and think, “Now, where did I put that?”
With slide film there are normally no prints to store, but how do you store the slides? In the boxes they arrived in? In slide trays? In slide pages? Do you put the slide pages in notebooks or in file folders? Or just put them in boxes? The most common method of storing slides is in slide pages: twenty images per page. Ten to fifteen slide pages fit in a file or Pendaflex hanging folder, so each folder stores about 300 slides within an inch or two of space in a box or file cabinet.
Plastic storage pages are slippery and tend to slide around as you work with them, and you have to find a way to store the pages. If you store them in notebooks, you have to take them out of the note book in order to view them on a light table, and returning them means lining up the binder holes to get the pages back in, which is time consuming and cumbersome for many people. Most people use filing cabinets, as they efficiently store the most in the least “room” space. Using hanging folders (Pendaflex) keeps the pages from slipping down in the cabinet, potentially damaging them. With catalog tags you can easily organize your work in the folders and drawers.
With the storage system set up, it is time to figure out how you want to keep track of your images. How do you want to find your images? By subject, by date, by season, by project…there are many choices. Begin by starting simple and inventory what you already have.
With the storage system set up, it is time to figure out how you want to keep track of your images. How do you want to find your images? By subject, by date, by season, by project…there are many choices. Begin by starting simple and inventory what you already have.
Our filing system is based on very simple techniques. Our lives are filled with a lot of living and doing and not much time for time-consuming office practices. Fast and easy is our motto. We needed a system to grow and change with us and our photographic interests. We group everything into several major categories: Mammals, Insects, Amphibians, Fish, Birds, Plants and Flowers, Locations, and so on. Not all images drop into nice and neat categories. We had a hard time with mountains, rivers, streams, clouds, fog, ice, snow, rain, and rocks. We finally realized these were all things of the earth and sky, so we created a group called Atmospherical and Geological.
While most of our images are of nature, people can be an enhancement to nature photographs. They provide a sense of scale and perspective. They draw USA, the audience, into the photograph. We tend to see the image from their point of view and not necessarily from our perspective outside the photograph.
By making them a detail you add dimension and scale to your image. A small person in a large canyon provides the audience with a sense of the height of the walls. A dot person in a wide reaching landscape makes us feel small in this vast world around us. If the person is a detail in the image, choose to make them an obvious detail. By having the person wear a red coat or something bright, or be positioned in a way that our eye notices them, the viewer looks at the person and then moves to examine the rest of the image. If their eye stumbles upon the person as their eye wanders through the image, the rest of the time may be spent wondering what that person is doing out there, ignoring the rest of the image. Keep a balance and let the person be a part of the image and the audience can share in their discovery.
can hold the camera in the traditional manner for a horizontal image, or turn it on its side for a vertical. This is all simple stuff, but what really is the difference?
Towering trees, skyscrapers, standing people, and tall animals all beg for the camera’s vertical format to enhance their height. Vertical images capture the land, horizon, and sky, but only a narrow version of it; they give a more intimate view. Tall things feel taller and wide things feel narrowed.
For the most part, the stationery market tends towards vertical images, though there is room for horizontals, too. The typical card display is set up for cards which show a vertical image and opens like a book. Postcards, though, similar in some respects to note cards, usually demand horizontal images.
If you would like one of your images to grace the cover of a magazine, odds are that it will have to be a vertical to fill the cover from top to bottom. Interior images, however, can be in either format, though the editorial market does want more verticals to fit within the column or page format. Interior images that also work, whatever their format, include space within the frame for text to be written over part of the image.
Picture books run in two different formats. Coffee table books, typically oversized, usually feature mostly horizontal images. Text books, guide books, and other books featuring photographs are typically vertical in shape and when they can, designers usually choose vertical images to fit within the column format. Unfortunately, though the photo buyers request verticals, they often get horizontals. Strong verticals, therefore, can increase your chance for a sale.
Landscapes are a favorite subject for many photographers. They are among the oldest subjects for a camera, going back to William Henry Jackson and other early photographers who traveled with the explorers on their trips west. Their photos of the Yosemite valley, and other places, along with the eloquent writings and speeches of John Muir, played a major role in the designation of many national parks.
Sometimes the story you want to tell is the overall landscape and sometimes it is a small bit. Using a long lens you can pick and choose. Here, Brent wanted to show the Alaska tundra with the trees reflecting in the water, then he 
realized that he really liked the trees in the water with the sunset light on the mountains. Both tell a different story even though they are both of the same subject.
The trick is to put the lens close to something interesting and hide all the unnecessary things behind it. A wide angle lens has an enormous depth of field. A 20mm will show everything from 11 inches to infinity in sharp focus. It also seems to expand space. Objects close to the lens seem abnormally large, while things far away diminish in size to the point that they disappear.
Try different perspectives, like horizontal and vertical, to create different effects of the same subject. Are these photographs of the 
mountains at Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the same or different? Does the feeling change? Different perspectives can capture different emotional qualities in an image.
The angle of view of a telephoto lens is very narrow. These lenses, with focal lengths from about 100mm on up, allow you to come in close on your subject and exclude everything else. Instead of showing the whole mountain, we can use a 300mm or 500mm and force our viewer to look at just the peak. Take a valley filled with clouds, and extract the best section showing the magical movement of the fog through the trees.
Something to remember about nature photography is that oftentimes, 
fascinating to watch and photograph as it totally changes the mood of a scenic. Weather creates great opportunities for the landscape photographer.
Photography in open air can be easy. Point and shoot. Add one of the other basic elements – water – and the rules change. A lot. Aquariums offer excellent opportunities to get up close and personal with your local (or not so local) squid, octopus and shark. For photographers, this represents a challenge. Between the camera and the subject is glass, often over an inch thick, and lots of water. Fish can be a big challenge to photograph.
If the subject is close to the glass or if the depth of field is large, the imperfections and scratches in the glass may show in the photographs. Keep to a moderate aperture for best results and faster shutter speeds.
Water absorbs a lot more light than air. To counter the density of the water, a medium to high powered flash is necessary, especially for large public aquariums. Two of the largest and finest public aquariums in the world are the Seattle Aquarium and the Monetary Aquarium in California. Using a flash synch-cord will allow you to take the flash off of the camera. Placing the flash against the glass or at a 45 degree angle to the glass will help eliminate “flash-back” or strong flash reflections in the glass. A polarizing filter can help cut reflections but it can also cost two stops of light, resulting in a slower shutter speed. Use it in combination with a flash.
Psychologists and psychiatrists report that an aquarium in your home or office will help to ease tensions and worries. Imagine what photographing one will do! If you have your own aquarium or want to set one up to photograph aquatic animals, or even lizards and frogs, it’s easy.
Inexpensive fish tanks are available from large retail stores such as WalMart or a local pet and fish supply stores. Sizes range from 5 gallons to over 150 gallons with prices from $10.00 to thousands. There are many easy to read instructional books for properly setting up a salt water or fresh water aquarium.
When photographing your own aquarium, take precautions to keep the water as clear as possible. Make sure it has been a couple of hours since the last feeding so all the food as been consumed or settled. Any props (rocks, wood, plants, etc.) should be rinsed and scrubbed thoroughly before introducing them to the tank. Carefully clean the glass inside and out.
You can easily adapt your aquarium for photographing the quick-moving fish. In his 
book, The Complete Guide to Wildlife Photography, 
Local fish and pet stores may allow you to come in during their “slack” times, usually first thing in the morning or middle of the day, to photograph their fish. Be cautious of other people tripping over your equipment, especially children, and of interfering with the work of the employees. A good negotiating tool is to provide a few prints to the store in return for the favor.
There are a variety of aquatic animals to photograph from tide pool creatures like starfish, anemones and urchins to tropical fish, shrimp, coral and seaweed, as well as aquatic insects. There is a lot of room for experimentation and new creative approaches. These techniques will work for wide angle or extreme close-ups of aquariums and the creatures within their glass constraints.
Slip. Slosh. Lay right down in the muck. If you’re not getting dirty, you aren’t having fun. This is wet belly photography. It is getting down and dirty and up close with flowers. We enjoy 
the vast variety of tulips that pop their heads out in the spring of Washington State during the Skagit Valley International Tulip Festival each April in Mt. Vernon, Washington. Look close to the ground and you will find other photographers slopping around in the mud with their camera gear. Hundreds of acres are filled with reds, yellows, purples and pinks, rows upon rows of color. It’s overwhelming. Many gardens are open to visitors from all over the world during the three week festival.
A great tip for photographing wildlife is to get down to your subject’s eye level. The same applies to flowers. Don’t shoot down, get down. Get low, get your camera level with the flower, or even get under it and shoot up. This is wet belly photography and the results are worth it. Next to sunsets, flowers are one of the most photographed nature subjects. Here are some tips for successful flower photography.
Overcast skies are favorites for nature photographers. Bright sunlight casts shadows and bright highlights, creating distracting elements in your photograph. Clouds filter the brightness of the sun, eliminating harsh shadows and producing an even light. If an overcast sky isn’t in the plan, you can use a 
wood stakes. Or bring a white or clear umbrella and place it to block the wind. Carry baggy ties or string to carefully tie grasses and other distracting branches out of the way or to tie the flower to a small stake to hold it still. Be careful not to get your wind block or support in your photograph. If you want to experiment with the wind, photograph the blowing flowers at slow shutter speeds and let the colors just pan across your film for colorful and fun pattern shots.
Weather in general offers all kinds of possibilities, not just wind and water droplets. Fog, mist, even a rain storm can offer dramatic compositions. Fog and mist creates a mysterious quality to your images. Expose for the flowers themselves and let the lighting take care of itself, or over- or underexpose by a third to a half to create a brighter or darker effect. Photograph the rain coming down at a medium to slow shutter speed to capture the rain as texture. Experiment and bracket to get the best results.
Early morning, just before the sun comes up to warm the earth and the wind begins to blow, you will often find flowers dressed in dewy jewels. Water droplets cling to the petals and sparkle in the early light. You can add your own dew drops by spraying your subject with a fine mist of water.
There is a whole new world to explore down and under the flowers. Check out the interesting backlit perspectives, highlighting textures and veins in the leaves and petals. Look for spiders, spider webs, and other insects making their homes, hunting for food, or just hanging out. It is a world of texture, pattern, color, and magic.
for the center post to invert, which works, but it’s often a challenge to get your eye to the viewfinder through the tripod legs. A 
If we could tilt the plane of focus to lie along the tops of the flowers, then it would be possible to photograph the field of flowers with every blossom sharply focused, even with a wide open aperture. This is what the tilt/shift lenses do, and is the practical result of the Scheimpflug principle, which states that the subject plane, the lens plane, and the film plane all intersect at a common point. The front of the lens tilts (as much as plus or minus eight degrees with the Canon lenses), and this brings almost any subject plane in focus. See diagram:
position for convenience, and then tilt the lens to align the subject plane with the plane of focus of the lens. The Canon 90mm tilt/shift lens is very sharp, works well with teleconverters and extension tubes, and makes a very flexible tool for macro photography. We haven’t used the Nikon, although we expect it to be equally sharp. All of these are manual focus lenses, and are similar in features with one exception. The Nikon aperture is not automatic, and must be manually opened for focusing and stopped down during exposure. Quality is not cheap, and list prices are about $1900 US for either make. You can expect to pay around $1100 by mail order to purchase the Canons, or about $1200 to $1300 for the Nikons.
When the depth of field is in millimeters, so shallow that even a focusing shift can create a completely different image, you have what is called “selective focus”. This is where the focus point becomes the subject rather than the subject itself. This is not a series of pictures of a red flower, but much more – artwork.
When you increase your magnification, you enter a new world where what is in focus is the main focus, allowing everything else to fade off into blurs. This process of deciding what to have sharp in the image and what not to is called selective focus. Developed extensively by nature photographer, Mary Ellen Schultz, her amazing studies of the inside of flowers, where focus and depth of field is measured in millimeters if measurable at all, have become classic works of art as she took abstract art and impressionism to new heights. Here are some samples of our work which recall the magic of her work.
As you work with this technique, a depth of field preview is required to help you choose your focus point and determine exactly what is in focus as well as what isn’t. And at extreme closeup magnification, lighting becomes a problem. Use a flashlight or studio lamp to assist you in focusing and composing, then turn it off to capture the natural light, if possible, or 
Expanding upon this notion of selective focus, you can also creative your own selective focus “blurs” to enhance your images. Especially when working with wildflowers, you are often challenged with difficult lighting situations as well as distracting foregrounds and backgrounds. By photographing with out-of-focus colorful flower pedals in the foreground, with your main subject in focus, you can create a watercolor wash of color in the foreground of your subject. If the neighboring flowers don’t cooperate, you can pick up some fallen or damaged flowers (we do not recommend picking wildflowers for this process) and hold them up in front of your lens to recreate the same quality. By understanding how your lens sees and working with the depth of field preview or by experimentation, move the flowers in your hand forwards and backward between the lens and the subject until you achieve your desired result.
