Restless Jerusalem

Apparently a little over a week ago the Israeli Government announced that it was making two historical sites near Hebron (The Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb) in the West Bank, and making them "Official Historical Sites," which basically means they are claiming them as official Israeli territory, despite the fact that the areas are inside the West Bank.  This has set off a series of protests and clashes here in Jerusalem between Muslims and the IDF/Cops.

Last Friday after Mosque, around 30 youth barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa after throwing rocks at tourists on the Temple Mount.  We went into partial lockdown mode after that, and couldn't go into the Old City or anywhere in East Jerusalem.  After a few days things simmered down and we were able to go out again.

Then tonight during lunch we heard a bunch of loud bangs and what some people described as gunfire.  Later, around dinner, we heard that some local youth were semi-blocking the street just outside our gates with a bonfire.  It wasn't anything huge, and there was no violence or anything besides a big fire, but it was definitely a statement.  Later I found out that over 300 protesters were throwing rocks at the cops and between 14 and 17 cops were hurt and a dozen or so protesters were injured. 

I rushed out to take some pictures and got a few decent ones.  After a while I saw a bunch of IDF riot cops (around 20) making their way up the road near the bottom of the center.  I snapped a few photos but my !@#!@#@! camera was set up wrong from doing some time exposures and most of them didn't turn out.  To make matters worse, I had left the camera set up to take medium res jpegs (I was playing with some time-lapse stuff...) and so all the pics responded pretty poorly to tweaking.. boo unto leaving your camera set up wrong.

Anyways, Here are a few shots.

Everything looks calm and peaceful...

Heres a "leveled" image before doing a noise reduction...

And this is the image from above, plus noise reduction!  Awesome!  These are the riot cops that were sneaking up the road by the center.

And here you can kinda see them all grouped together on the left...

A little HDR

Well, I know HDR is iffy, but here goes... Cheers

An Inviting Seat at Mt. Herzl

Thinking about just starting posting a pic a day to get back in the habit of posting.

Bet-Shemesh, Micah Caves, and the Central Hills of Israel

We had a great fieldtrip into the central hill area of Israel the other day, and it was amazing!  Everything was so wonderful and green everywhere we looked.  That was probably due partly to the rains we got a few weeks ago, and also just that it is the green season.  Looking out over the lush green rolling hills it's hard to imagine them being brown and dead.  I'm sure glad we got to see it in the green season.

Near the Micah Caves there are tons of underground structures carved into the soft limestone.  Here is an underground room with 3 giant oil presses and an olive crusher.  There were also dwelling rooms and cisterns in the same complex.  Nearby were underground barns, many large cisterns, and other rooms used for industry.  Working underground sheltered the people from the hot sun.

A Day in the Old City

I'm too sick and tired to really write much but wanted to start getting into posting again, its been a while. I have a ton of pictures from all over Israel and Egypt as well, so stay tuned for more. I'm probably going to focus just on more (slightly) artistic shots here on the blog, even tho most of my shots lately are pictures of the BYU group I'm with.

Yesterday must have been "Israeli soldiers go on tour" day, and there were tons of soldiers out and about...

A Short Walk to the Pools of Siloam

Today we went on a short walk down the Kidron Valley to the Pool of Siloam, where the current exit to Hezakiah's Tunnel is located.  I thought it might be fun to post a map of my little journey, and will probably do something similar for other trips.  I might not always post them, but thought it would be fun to have a record of my path.  Also, I am geotagging all my photos, as well as doing fairly extensive keywording in hopes of being able to effectively sort through the massive amounts of photos I will end up having at the end of this trip.

Current photo count: 305 (piddly for a whole week I know, but I have not really been focusing on taking photos yet.

The Church of All Nations, by the Garden of Gethsemane:

The Russian Orthodox Church, The Church of St. Mary Magdalene, just east of the Garden of Gethsemane:

A random tree in and path near southeast of the Temple Mount, in the Kidron Valley:

Absalom's Pillar, or the Tomb of Absalom, with both the Church of St. Mary Magdalene and the Church of All Nations in the background:

Goodbye to Winter

Well winter is pretty much over for me!  Here in Jerusalem it is warm and has been 70 or 80 degrees everyday!  I have had to worry about sunburns more than cold weather, and I am super happy about that.  So from now on out it will be Near East photos, but as I was sorting through my pictures I discovered a few small ones I wanted to share.  Enjoy

In Jerusalem

Well, I am in Jerusalem for the semester.  I am not sure how many photos or anything I will end up being able to get up here, but I might get a few posts up.

My Present to Mom and Dad

Here's a really not-so-good picture of the final framed project.  Its all distorted cause I had to take it from a weird angle, but overall it looks really really good.  The frame is 24x16 inches and the print is 6x14 inches.

Merry Christmas!

Printed

This is the one I ended up printing. I printed it 6 inches by 14, and framed it in a 24x16 inch frame. and it looks GREAT! I'll post some pics of the whole thing later.

Here is the final file I printed:

And here's the original, mostly un-photoshopped verision, to show you the joys of photoshop.