A Full Moon

Hello all. I realize that it's been about three weeks since my last post. I've been busy doing things but oddly, I've not really had the opportunity to take a large amount of pictures. That said, I've got a neat few for today.

I've always been fascinated by low light, long exposure pictures. I had built up a fair amount of nighttime shots before the whole cat fiasco in which I lost all of my pictures. One night recently, I spent some time up on my roof. The moon was out and it was very pleasant outside. The view from my roof lends me a nice vantage of most of downtown.


One of the crazy things I noticed upon reviewing my pictures is just how much dust is in the air. I remember thinking to myself, "Wow, what a clear night, this'll make for some good pictures." Yet, looking at the glowing halo around the brightly lit moon shows just how hazy it can be with the dust/sand being blown up. And like I said, this night was quite clear in comparison to other nights. What's crazy is that all those points of light probably only represent about 20% of the entire city.


From our apartment we can easily see the old Palace that rests atop a hill between two valleys. It's always quite impressive when it's lit up at night with the skyline behind it.


Here is a close up of the Palace with the city in the background. Sometimes when I'm out running late at night, I take a path that winds right by here and I just sit and take it in. It still amazes me that I actually live here.


This is a enlarged section of the town that was far off in the distance in the previous wider shots. If you click on it you should be able to see lots of little details.


Finally I end with a shot of the moon.

Nighttime here is really a wonderful thing. The temperature drops considerably from the daytime highs, and the people come out. Not that it's too terribly bad during the day (I think San Antonio is quite regularly much hotter in the day), but when you have no air conditioning, the nighttime temperature drop is a godsend when trying to sleep.

A Beach Below Sea Level

So I've been out to the Dead Sea area several times, but until recently I hadn't gotten the opportunity to actually go INTO the water. It was a wonderfully sunny day. I even got slightly sunburnt.


The first thing you notice upon walking up to the water's edge is the solidified salt that covers everything - even under the water in places. The picture above shows how easy it is to pull up handfuls of salt. That should give you an idea about just how salty the water is.


Upon venturing into the water you can definitely smell the salt and you notice the water feels slightly odd; almost as though it's oily. I know that sounds strange considering it's full of gritty salt and sediment, but it really was somehow more slick than plain water. See the sand under water ?


I was amazed at how buoyant I was. You hear all the stories about how you can't sink, but it's still a strange feeling to just lay back and bob at the surface of the water.


I tried to stand straight up, but that proved difficult; my legs kept trying to float up from beneath me. I finally managed to bounce like a cork straight up and down in the water.


Naturally I started goofing off and seeing just what I could do since I didn't have to work at keeping myself afloat with my arms and legs. I call this one "The Airplane."


As I was getting up out of the water one of my friends threw a glob of mud at me. Notice the big clump below my left shoulder? This quickly escalated into mud slinging. And at that point I was covered in mud so I decided to go ahead and do the cliché of covering myself entirely in Dead Sea mud.


Apparently people pay lots of money for Dead Sea mud; there are shops lining the Dead Sea selling the stuff. And for good reason! Don't I look especially attractive?

After about 10 minutes covered in it though, I'd had enough. I got washed off. By the way, if you ever go to the Dead Sea DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT attempt to swim under the water. I wanted to show the laws of physics it wasn't gonna keep me from sinking. Bad idea. I had my eyes tightly shut and my mouth completely locked closed, but it didn't matter. My lips shriveled and my eyes stung immediately. It was not cool.


This last picture gives a glimpse of what the shore looked like from the water; complete with Euro Speedo Man.