Foto Friday – Dan Haimovich gets Hip(stamatic)
Filed under: Art, Blogging, Food, Foto Friday, General, Life, Pop Culture, Profiles, Travel
Professional photographer Dan Haimovich left the field several years ago and returned recently to find something completely different. Over the past decade, photography had changed radically by going 100% digital and — thanks to mobile devices and the Internet — becoming part of everyday conversation.
Working with the Hipstamatic app for iPhone, which enables users to take pictures that look like those taken by the analog plastic cameras of the past, Haimovich captures small slices of life in Tel Aviv.
“The app reminded me of the age of film. Under certain lighting conditions it works exactly right and it unleashed something in me — a creative force that I haven’t experienced in a long time. ”
One feature of Hipstamatic , in mimicking its analog predecessor, is to create a slight disparity between what is seen through the viewfinder and the resulting “through the lens” image. It’s a retro touch that Haimovich enjoys. “What’s fascinating is that you have to approximate the frame so things come into it that are unplanned, unexpected.”
Haimovich has been posting the new works on his blog and on Facebook, often with short descriptions about how a particular series came into being. “With with these [Hipstamatic] works I found the ability to connect text to images. I give them short titles that are very intuitive and immediate. I find this combination works very well. Plus, you get feedback which is very nice. It’s very interesting to see what works and what doesn’t.”
Another project since returning to the medium is food photography. He most recently completed shooting a vegetarian cookbook with his sister Miki Haimovich, one of Israel’s premier newswomen (who last week announced she will be stepping down from her position co-anchoring the Channel 10 nightly news to pursue other projects).
To honor these and all other new beginnings, we’ll close with a new broom and wish all Israelity readers the very best for 2011!
Israel becomes Perez Hilton’s oyster
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, Entertainment, General, Pop Culture
Local celebrities shouldn’t have anything to worry about – they’re not big enough for notorious US gossip columnist Perez Hilton to care about.
Hilton is spending the week vacationing in Israel and tweeting about it, as well as writing about it on his website.
According to a Twitter posting, Hilton arrived to spend Christmas here after vacationing in Egypt.
The post read: “Dancing in my hotel room in Tel Aviv to this! Hot!!!! On Christmas day I just landed in the birth land of Christ. #Israel, I have arrived! Shalom!”
Hilton, born Mario Armando Lavandeira, Jr. has emerged as the preeminent gossip blogger, known for posts covering juicy items about musicians, actors and celebrities. Controversy surrounds him over the posting of tabloid photos over which he has added his own captions and his ‘outing’ of alleged closeted celebrities.
So far in Israel, though, Hilton seems to content to bask in the rich culture of Tel Aviv. He’s posted a bunch of photos like the one above and some entertaining accompanying text like this:
Okay, so maybe we got a little too excited, but this hideously ugly pants are beyond amazing and we had to buy them.
Score!!!
Our first full day in Tel Aviv was a wonderful mix of going to museums and learning about the complicated history of Israel, as well as just walking around various neighborhoods and parts of town and truly exploring the city.
Tel Aviv is so beautiful! And, in many ways, it reminds us of Buenos Aires.
We are thrilled that we’re in Israel through next weekend and that we’re going to get to see the entire country.
Lots more to do!!!
So, keep your eyes open for Perez, and if you see him, tell him Israelity is looking for him.
No need to plug these leaks
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, General, Israeliness, News, Politics, Technology
Israeli officials were quivering in their chairs on Sunday in anticipation of WikiLeak’s release of the trove of diplomatic cables it had obtained. The weekend papers warned that there would be much embarrassment on both the Israeli side over revealed US government assessments of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, and former PMs Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert.
Netanyahu went so far to remind reporters on Sunday, before the documents were published on news websites around the world, that Israel was not expected to be the focus of the documents.
“Israel is not the center of international attention,” Netanyahu said during a visit to the southern border with Egypt. “Normally, there’s a gap between what is said publicly and what is said privately, but in this case, the gap is not large.”
It turned out that he was right. While the documents released Sunday night included some titillating tidbits about other public figures – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was referred to as “Hitler,” French President Nicolas Sarkozy as a “naked emperor,” the German chancellor was called Angela “Teflon” Merkel and Afghan President Hamid Karzai as “driven by paranoia,” Vladimir Putin was referred to as “Alpha Male,” while Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is “afraid, hesitant,” Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s full-time nurse is a “hot blond,” and Berlusconi loves “wild parties,” – the material pertaining to Israel is serious and to the point.
• Maj.-Gen. Amos Yadlin, who stepped down as head of the IDF’s Military Intelligence last week, said in a meeting in 2009 with US Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Florida) that Israel was not in a position to underestimate Iran and be surprised like the United States was on 9/11.
• Mossad director Meir Dagan told Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns in 2007 that Israel and the United States need to do more to create regime change in Iran.
• Dagan also told Frances Fragos Townsend, assistant to the US president for homeland security and counterterrorism, in the summer of 2007 that IDF operations against Hamas in the West Bank were preventing the terrorist group from taking over the Fatah-controlled territory, according to a cable from the US Embassy in Tel Aviv to the State Department.
• According to another cable sent from the embassy in Tel Aviv, Barak revealed to a congressional delegation in 2009 that Israel tried to coordinate Operation Cast Lead with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
According to an analysis by The Jerusalem Post’s Yaakov Katz, “while there were some comments made by Mossad director Meir Dagan regarding leaders in the Middle East – the emir of Qatar is “annoying,” and the king of Morocco is not interested in governing – that are slightly embarrassing, Israeli politicians were spared the more embarrassing analyses of their personalities that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi received.”
Not even a mention of Bibi’s comb over. And Katz also surmised that from an Israeli perspective, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the WikiLeaks documents may have helped Israel.
By presenting the Arab leaders as more extreme in their remarks than Israeli leaders, the cables show the dissonance in the region and the danger involved in allowing Iran to continue with its nuclear program.
So, our initial pre-embarassment over the release of the classified documents has turned into satisfaction. At least until the more damning ones come out.
Foto Friday – Tea & Herbs with Yula Zubritsky
Filed under: Art, Blogging, Food, Foto Friday, General, History and Culture, Picture of the Week, Pop Culture, Profiles, Travel
Yula Zubritsky is a photographer and designer with a passion for good food and the lifestyle that goes with it. This week, despite the unseasonably hot weather, she’s come out with a series of photos “Tea & Herbs” in anticipation of the cold and rain that’s bound to happen… sometime… sooner of later.
“I love styling and photographing food best and I love this series very much,” Zubritsky says. It’s understandable. Just seeing it makes you want to curl up under a warm blanket with a steaming hot cuppa of aromatic tea…
Which is precisely the intent; the photos accompany the packaging of a new line of herbal teas soon to be launched by health food marketer Sod HaTeva.
Zubritsky has styled and photographed food for some of Israel’s leading restaurants — and their chefs. She, together with Mirabelle Gazit, culinary writer, restaurant critic and labor lawyer (but that’s another story), offer comment on the best in food and wine that Israel has to offer on their blog MiYu. It’s in Hebrew only but the photos are delightfully yummy.
Their latest posting: the glad tidings that IsraFood - the 27th International Exhibition for Food and Beverage, will take place on November 22-24 at the Tel Aviv Fairgrounds. With 19,500 visitors in 2009, the event is one of the highlights of Israel’s culinary year. And by then, the weather could change — and we might even be in the mood for a nice hot drink!
Eyal’s bar mitzvah
Filed under: A New Reality, Blogging, design, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Movies, Religion
You’ve probably watched this bar mitzvah invite that was making the rounds on Facebook for the last week or two. Created by the Goodman family of Tel Mond, a suburb near Ra’anana, the clip uses a scene from a biblical made-for-TV-movie depicting the reconciliation between troubled twins Jacob and Esau — the parsha for the bar mitzvah boy, Eyal — as the pretext for the invite.
What’s hilarious about the whole video is that it made it’s way across Facebook, receiving 70,000 hits at the last count from the Jerusalem Post, and even a mention from Atlantic Monthly writer Jeffrey Goldberg, who declared his own blog wish to attend Eyal’s bar mitzvah.
The invite seems to have been created by an event planning company, Your Simcha In Israel, and they’ve gotta be pleased by all the free publicity this invite has generated for them. My question is, how did the family feel about having their private invite plastered all over the internet?
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