Israel Independence Day 2010

f/7.1 – 1/160 – ISO 100 – 18mm

During Independence day in Israel we have a lot of “traditions”, most of them are just some things we got used to do again and again. One of those examples are a small ceremony for the kids in the kindergarten.  Imagine yourself in the midst of 250 kids, from the age of 1 to 5, all standing in the sun listening to the kindergarten teachers lecturing about independence day from a piece of paper the is so worn from use it is almost yellow. none of them understand what is this for, but all they know is that somewhere along the ceremony they will be allowed to dance in front of their parents and this is the only thing they wait for. I personally hate this, but my child loves this and was waiting for this from the day they started teaching her the dance. One thing good to be said about this event is that it is a great photo opportunity.

I have to admit one thing. This photo is a little “cheat” by me. The day the photo was taken was a hot sunny day with not a single cloud in the sky. So to make it a more attractive photo I just “planted” some nice sky. The original photo can be seen here if you wish to see the difference.

f/5.6 – 1/160 – ISO 100 – 70mm

Another “tradition” here is to have a BBQ with as many people as you can host in your chosen location to set the grill. In this day in Israel there is almost no place you can pass without seeing someone on the BBQ (including some traffic circles). For this image I only ran a Photoshop plug-in named Tupaz, and used one of the presets to highlight details. Original can be found here.

As always, I would love your comments, suggestions and most of all criticism about either or both the original and the processed photographs. I take every comment I get to heart and try to learn from it. Feel free to contact me by commenting to this blog, email or private message in one of the social media site.