52Frames Focuses on Men and Women

I really had fun with the past two 52Frames themes, or "challenges" as I refer to them. For last week we needed a picture of women or a woman. And for this week, as you can guess, I needed a man or men.

I wanted an interesting looking woman, and that's usually a euphemism for someone "elderly." I wanted someone whose face told a story. One of my neighbors fit the bill perfectly.

Don't you think so? She's a very special lady who has done many amazing things in her life. I took her picture at the local ulpan, which is once a week for Shiloh's senior citizens. By the way there are a number of weekly activities for senior citizens here which are conducted in Hebrew with translations when needed into English and Russian.

The following week, pretty obviously, I needed a picture of a man or men. A few weeks ago when I had checked out future themes and discovered it, I decided that I wanted a picture of a young father with  a baby. Then as war preparations heated up here I thought that I should take pictures of some milu'imnikim, reservists, like the ones I'd been seeing  in Yafiz buying socks and other supplies. So I took my camera to work with me, but by then no uniformed soldiers showed up. I guess they were on the front already.

I was starting to get nervous, since the deadline was quickly approaching. Then, when I was in the shoe store awaiting customers I noticed a young man walk into Rami Levy, the discount supermarket. Not only was his baby strapped onto him, the way I had envisioned, but I know the young father. I couldn't just abandon the store, but a short while later when I had a short break I rushed in to look for them. When I found them, I asked if I could take their picture. I offered to find an angle that would make him unidentifiable, but he said that wasn't a problem.

I shot a whole slew of pictures while he and the baby smiled rather consciously. Then he bent his head and gave the baby a kiss. The only problem was and is that light in the corner. So I asked him to do it again and took photos from different angles, but they weren't as nice as this one. I cropped it as much as I could, and here it is:

These two pictures have gotten the best reactions of all of the pictures I've ever taken for the group. It's going to be hard to top them.