focus on life: looking up - week 20

This week let’s change our perspective and look up!

There is a whole world above us that we sometimes miss seeing because we simply forget to look up.

Sally's prompt is "Looking Up" for week 20 of the year long photography series "Focus on Life" at The Studio Sublime. I've been looking up all week in the hopes of seeing a fab photo op, but no such luck!

It was on the last day this week when I stood outside the main entrance to the International Teaching Centre building (where I serve) and found what I was looking for. Clouds. I am enjoying the most expressive skies, during my stay in Israel, that I have ever seen. The cloud formations are amazing. I wonder if it has to do with being located on the coast? Maybe that huge body of water called the Mediterranean Sea influences the nature of the clouds.

Every time I look out at Haifa Bay, where the water meets the sky, my eyes, my heart and my body sigh with pleasure. This is my daily view, morning and evening, while walking to work and back to the flat, but only in portions, as the view is far more sweeping than what my camera can capture in one picture.

Just in case the bay photos aren't considered "looking up", lol, I looked above me and got a shot of another favorite thing, columns with clouds!

Speaking of looking up, you can see the sun setting over the Mediterranean in my birthday post Chocolate Mousse and Sunsets from earlier in the week. :-)

 I joined this blog group at week 8, (monochromatic experiment) in February, and I've had a blast ever since. I missed last week's prompt, "Hope", due to very long work days including the weekend! I'm back and can't wait to see all the fab eye candy photography over at Sally's blog The Studio Sublime! 

single snapshot

Snapshot: Popularly defined as a photograph that is "shot" spontaneously and quickly, most often without artistic or journalistic intent. Common snapshot subjects include events of everyday life.

For this snapshot, I'm riding on a local bus in Haifa and while the bus momentarily stopped, I snapped a quick shot of an Arab woman and Jewish man waiting for a city bus. The camera caught my route map reflected in the window, as well as a bit of the blue bus seat on the left.

around israel: chocolate mousse and mediterranean sunsets

This week I turned 55. Tonight I spent the evening watching the sunset, sitting on the Mediterranean coast in Haifa Israel with good friends, good food and laughter. I shot the photos below, all from the same spot, and then it rained so we dashed inside the cafe for hot chocolate and dessert. The waiters sang "Happy Birthday" in English. Chocolate mousse melted in my mouth. It was a pretty great day.

“When the ship approached the equator, I stopped going out on deck in the daytime. The sun burned like a flame. The days had shortened and night came swiftly. One moment it was light, the next it was dark. The sun did not set but fell into the water like a meteor."

                                                                    - Isaac Bashevis Singer

"How fine has the day been! How bright was the sun, How lovely and joyful the course that he run! Though he rose in a mist when his race he begun, And there followed some droppings of rain: But now the fair traveller's come to the west, His rays are all gold, and his beauties are best; He paints the skies gay as he sinks to his rest, And foretells a bright rising again."

                                                                               - Isaac Watts
                                                                              

This post is linked to Our World Tuesday where you can find lots of wonderful bloggers sharing their corner of the world as they see it!