Happy Chanukah to one and all

As Chanukah (Also Hanukah Chanuka Hanuka and many more spelling variations) is approaching rapidly I wanted to take this chance to wish you all a Happy Chanukah and a merry Christmas





Chanukah is the Jewish festival of light similar to Christmas in that as aspect and that they both stem from pagan mid winter festivals

With have a large selection of Jewish stock photography, Judaism images and Jewish life, customs, heritage and ceremonies






Chanukah stock photography - Images by photostock-israel .


Jewish Stock photos - Images by photostock-israel .

Stock Photographs of The Dead Sea

The Dead Sea is a salt lake Its surface and shores are 422 metres (1,385 ft) below sea level, the lowest elevation on the Earth's surface on dry land. The Dead Sea is 378 m (1,240 ft) deep, It is also one of the world's saltiest bodies of water, with 33.7% salinity. It is 8.6 times as salty as the ocean. This salinity makes for a harsh environment where animals cannot flourish, hence its name. The Dead Sea is 67 kilometres (42 mi) long and 18 kilometres (11 mi) wide at its widest point. It lies in the Jordan Rift Valley, and its main tributary is the Jordan River.

The Dead Sea has attracted visitors from around the Mediterranean basin for thousands of years. Biblically, it was a place of refuge for King David. It was one of the world's first health resorts (for Herod the Great), and it has been the supplier of a wide variety of products, from balms for Egyptian mummification to potash for fertilizers. People also use the salt and the minerals from the Dead Sea to create cosmetics and herbal sachets.

In recent decades, the Dead Sea has been rapidly shrinking because of diversion of incoming water from the Jordan River to the north. The southern end is fed by a canal maintained by the Dead Sea Works, a company that converts the sea's raw materials. From a depression of 395 m (1,296 ft) below sea level in 1970 it fell 22 m (72 ft) to 418 m (1,371 ft) below sea level in 2006, reaching a drop rate of 1 m (3 ft) per year. Although the Dead Sea may never entirely disappear, because evaporation slows down as surface area decreases and salinity increases, it is feared that the Sea's characteristics may substantially change.

The Dead Sea level drop has been followed by a groundwater level drop, causing brines that used to occupy underground layers near the shoreline to be flushed out by freshwater. This is believed to be the cause of the recent appearance of large sinkholes along the western shore — incoming freshwater dissolves salt layers, rapidly creating subsurface cavities that subsequently collapse to form these sinkholes.

Dead-Sea Stock Photography - Images by photostock-israel .

Ilan Rosen
www.PhotoStock-Israel.com

Eilat, Israel stock photography

Winter is here so I think it is a good time to talk about Eilat with a selection of our Eilat stock photographs from our archives at www.PhotoStock-Israel.com

Eilat is Israel's southernmost city, a busy port as well as a popular resort, located at the northern tip of the Red Sea, on the Gulf of Eilat. The city is part of the Southern Negev Desert, at the southern end of the Arava. The city is adjacent to the Egyptian village of Taba to the south, the Jordanian port city of Aqaba to the east, and within sight of Saudi Arabia to the south-east, across the gulf.

Eilat's arid desert climate is moderated by proximity to a warm sea. Temperatures often exceed 40 °C (104 °F) in summer, and 18 °C (64 °F) in winter, while water temperatures range between 20 and 26 °C (68 and 79 °F). The city's beaches, nightlife and desert landscapes make it a popular destination for domestic and international tourism.

Eilat is well known for it's underwater marine life


Timna - Solomon's mines are close




Eilat stock photographs - Images by photostock-israel .

Enjoy your winter vacation
www.PhotoStock-Israel.com

Practicing Faith Christianity

Christmas is just around the corner so this is a good opportunity to upload some religion and faith stock images

Based in Israel allows us access to many of the most important location of Christianity. We have a vast collection of Christian stock photography from all over the Holyland

Following are some images All available as prints as well at www.PhotoStock-Israel.com








And just for some fun, an image that is based on the Christmas themes but not exactly



And a short slide show of Christianity Faith

Practicing faith - Christianity - Images by photostock-israel .

Till next time
Ilan Rosen
www.PhotoStock-Israel.com

Anthropology stock photography

From a past life I have a great interest in anthropology
A lot of my personal work is based on the Participating Observer principle. Working a lot with our local subcultures This could be an interesting future post

We are now in the process of collecting anthropology stock images from around the world. we currently have a good coverage of stock images Africa and some coverage of stock images of Asia and Central America

A slide show of some of out anthropology images

Anthropology stock photography - Images by photostock-israel .

Some images from our archive
Hamer Tribe Ethiopia

Karo tribesmen

Mursi tribesmen

Tanzania, Datoga tribe

Hadza AKA Hadzabe Tribe

Maasai

Padaung Karen woman


Well, we have so many more, I will have to continue in a future post
So, To Be Continued.......

Have a great weekend
Ilan Rosen
www.PhotoStock-Israel.com

Stock photography of Winter

Hi All

First of all thank you all for your emails and comments much appreciated
Secondly, I was planning a post about copyright abuse but as it is raining today I changed the topic to be winter and rain stock photography

You may not be aware of the fact but Israel isn't very rich in water (a large portion is desert). For the past 5 years our annual average rainfall was below average bringing on droughts and water rationing - the rationing by a levy on the price of water is imposed on households only. Farmers can still waste as much water as they want and pay very little - much less than the price paid by households. To be honest some farmers use very hi-tech efficient irrigation methods such as drip irrigation

The most spectacular result are desert flash floods


Some conceptional drought images



The dreaded Dead Sea Sink Holes


And now to some positive images of rain




Wishing us all a rainy winter
All The Best
Ilan Rosen
www.PhotoStock-Israel.com

Stock Photography and keywording

By far the most challenging activity a stock photographer and especially a small stock agency has is the task of captioning and keywording images
Captioning is quite a lot of fun

We sit with various resources; books, dictionaries, on line resources and research each topic. The fun part is learning. We try to answer the relevant W questions in this part

Keywords on the other hand is more of an art than a task. When is enough enough?
Some keywording tips:

1. Remember to use both American and UK spelling - Harbour / Harbor
2. Remember to add words from American and UK English Trunk and boot spring to mind
3. Plurals are needed at some outlets others do this automatically
4. Various forms of the verbs used such as: run running
5. Don't get carried away some words are more commonly is other meanings
6. Spell check. This is probably the most important tip. I have seen way too many images ith incorrect spelling including images I got back from a keywording company - Never used that company again

Look at the following image carefully and tell me if you would order the dish


Summary: We don't use any bells and whistles software we use our brain. In one word THINK And we try to think as a buyer / researcher may think. For each relevant keyword we ask ourselves: Would this image be used for to represent that word or phrase. If there is a chair in the background would this be a good keyword to use? Probably not as the image will never be licensed for it's chair quality. That's the easy example, It becomes much more difficult with concept keywords

so here is the image to lead you down the right path



Hope this helps you all
Ilan Rosen
PhotoStock-Israel

Science stock Photography

I'm sitting in a cafe in Dizengoff street in Tel Aviv quite similar to

good coffee and watching city life go by Wish I could spend all my days like this but I have work to do

Back on Topic Science and technology stock photography
there are many types of Scientific stock images:
Conceptual science images

Objects, tools and equipment

Science in Action - the implementation of scientific tools in research


and some pretty affects


View our Scientific image slide show for an idia of what more we have

Science, Technology and medicine stock photography - Images by photostock-israel .

See you all again soon
Ilan Rosen
www.PhotoStock-Israel

Archaeology stock photography

Israel is a wonderful place for archaology enthusiasts and scholars with many sites from different eras starting with prehistoric man and on to today
The three major religions have their roots deeply embedded in the holyland
We at photostock-Israel have a vast collection of stock images of historic and archaeological sites and religious sites
But no worry, we have stock images from historic sites from around the world as well

Archaeology Stock Photography - Images by photostock-israel .

Agriculture stock photography

Israel is best known for a few thinks: mainly Religion, Military, and my favorite by far Agriculture

As religion stock photography was covered in a previous post And military stock photography will be covered in a future post with an emphasis on unique stock images of The Israeli Air Force IAF. In this post I wold like to talk a bit about Agriculture technology, methods, pest control, and more

We have quite an extensive collection of stock images of modern agriculture photography in our archives including
fisheries

Irrigation methods

Dessert Farming stock photography


We also have images from other countries mainly Midwest USA and from primitive agricultural methods from Asia and Africa

As always, your comments are most welcome

following is a slide show of a small selection of our agriculture images
Feel free to copy the slideshow code and embed in your own website
Enjoy
PhotoStock-Israel

Agriculture - Images by photostock-israel .

Stock Photography of Sukkoth

Sukkot or Feast of the Tabernacles Sometimes spelled Sukkot Succos, Succoth
is a Jewish Holiday celebrated on the 15th day of the month of Tishrei (late September to late October). It is one of the three biblical pilgrim festivals when it was traditional for Jews to visit the Temple in Jerusalem.

The holiday lasts seven days. The word Sukkot is the plural of the Hebrew word sukkah, meaning booth or hut. The sukka is reminiscent of the type of the fragile dwellings in which the ancient Israelites dwelt during their 40 years of wandering in the desert after the Exodus from Egypt. Throughout the holiday the sukkah becomes the living area of the house, and all meals are eaten in it. Some believers even sleep in the sukkah On each day of the holiday, members of the household recite a blessing over the Four Spices

Etrog or Ethrog or citron

Lulav or palm branch

Hadas - Myrtle

Aravah - Willow

all this are inspected closely the verify the quality

a slide show of a selection of our Sukkot stock images to follow

Sukkoth stock photograpjy - Images by photostock-israel .

Jewish New Year and High Hilidays

Being based in the Holyland, one of the main topics we cover is religion
We cover all four: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and the too often forgotten Bahai

The Jewish New Year Ended on last Sunday while the Muslim Ramadan is soon to end. In a couple of days some of the Jews will be fasting and praying on Yom Kippur. As there is no car traffic other Jews will be riding bicycles in the streets This is the quietest day of the year.

5 Days after Yom Kippur The Jews celebrate Sukkoth


But that will be covered in another post
Have a Happy New year
Shana Tova
From www.PhotoStock-Israel.com

Wishing you a Shana Tova - Images by photostock-israel .

First post - Goals and Ideas I have for future posts

Hi All

Being my first post I am actually trying this out for size
I have a few ideas I would like to share on this blog in future posts but for now I am just checking it out

I am a stock photographer or personal site but my main source of income is from managing the Israeli stock Agency PhotoStock-Israel.com based in Tel Aviv, Israel

We started off with 4 photographers 5 years ago now we represent 60 local talent and our archive has grown to 27,000 images







Slideshow 0906 Summer vacation - Images by photostock-israel .

For my next posts I plan to talk about some of the images or topics we have on file. Some photography business related issues. And other topics that hit my fancy at the time. Also I am open to suggestions from readers and would love to answer any question you may that I CAN
answer

Have a great year 5770
Ilan