Bar and bat Mitzvah Photography- by Shani Barel – Serving the Great Los Angeles Area » modern photography with a twist of sarcasm

When I went to Israel in January, I was overdue for  a vacation, an escape, a rejuvenation, a time out, an adventure, a break. I took no computers. and no cameras. OK – I did take a camera – my Black and White “film” camera – I explained about it here ( in short – I took my old, Canon 5D, set it to Manual,  B&W, JPG Large, 28 mm lens with a polarizing filter – and used black gaffer’s tape to hide  the screen on the back of the camera so I couldn’t see the result…) it’s my vacation camera- and it brings me back to the way I used to take pictures – not knowing what they’d look like until i developed them. It makes me slow down, and it makes me take one photo instead of 5 that look exactly the same. Anyways… while I was there – I met with my friend Lilac who was curating an art show titled “Abroad” or in hebrew- חוצלארץ. And she saw one of my images from here and asked if it could participate. I tried to be cool about it but inside I was YES, THEY LIKE ME, THEY REALLY LIKE ME! so I participated in an art show – my first one since graduating Art School. I had the best time visiting home – and I spent a few days as a tourist in my own town. I didn’t get the camera out much – but ion a couple of mornings I took a bicycle along the boardwalk and stopped to snap some shots. And even though I was Home, it made me feel like I was Abroad. Here’s the result.

and here’s an online blurb that used my image– yup – that’s my name down there on the bottom right.