Hello?
When I was studying at a yeshiva in Tzfas, everyday during lunch break I would go on a hike in the mountains. By dinner time, the food was so awful I’d go walk around the town and find somewhere else to eat. Every night while eating my unhealthy Israeli street food I got to see the beautiful Tzafti sunset. Both these blocks in my daily schedule privileged to see some of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. Before I left America, I was on the fence on bring with me my Nikon F3 that for years has been collecting dust. Ultimately I decided against it because of the potential nightmare of dealing with film in a town with little hipster friendly infrastructure. While I was looking down from the hill Tzfas sits on top, I could only feel deep regret not having a camera to capture these moments. After transferring to a yeshiva in Jerusalem, I decided that when I returned to America I would buy my first digital camera.
My photographic background is almost exclusively in black and white film. Over my highschool years I shot on a Cannon AE-1, Mamiya 645, Nikon F5, and F3 and self-developed in an exclusively black and white darkroom. So in deciding what camera to buy I wanted something that felt familiar to me. I also wanted good jpegs so I wouldn’t give my brain blisters learning how to use Lightroom or some other program I have to sell my soul to use. Both of these desires lead me into the Fujifilm realm. I wanted a X100 because of just how compact it was, but I couldn’t justify how much even the older models cost. Shout out all the influencers hyping things up and then jacking up the prices of things! While still in Jerusalem, I ordered a Fuji X-T20 with a 23mm F/2.8 pancake for the same price as a X100 of the same era.
Savannah, Georgia
When I returned to America, my first stop on my journeys was Savannah, Georgia. These photos were taken on May 5th 2026. I came to town for mivtzoim at a Lag B’Omer event and just turned it into a day trip. Savannah is an interesting place to say the least. SCAD attracts an odd bunch of rich kids with way too much free time on their hands. Maybe that’s reductive to say, but the character is best expressed within the two sides of the town’s inhabitants; the townies and the hipsters. When I walked through downtown’s Forsyth Park I saw an odd mix of rich southern socialites who all dress the exact same. It’s definitely a jarring experience to see goths in corpse paint walking past a kid who looks like he’s walking home from the golf course in khaki shorts and a tucked in polo, all under the backdrop of traditional southern architecture. Savannah is a bizarre mixture of art supply stores, vintage shops, indie bookstores, churches, and gun shops. The standout shop, in my opinion, is Graveface Records. It’s part record store, part taxidermy shop, and now part true crime museum. It is not only the first record store I ever went around late 2016 to and where I bought my first record, In The Court of the Crimson King. The museum was closed when I went there but I’m not sure if a GG Allin exhibit is my idea of an enriching experience. I asked the workers what I should check out in Savannah, and the gave me a list of cemeteries, what an odd bunch. I bought an old copy of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures which despite having the album cover tattooed on me, nebach, I somehow didn’t own.
To blog or something
I have been saying I am going to start a blog for the better part of 2 years. I’ve been wanting to blast my thoughts, opinions, and photos into the void of the internet for a while. Alas a mix of procrastination and genuine busyness meant that this project constantly got put on the backburner; until now I guess. I have really wanted this outlet to truly let the creative juices somewhere in my brain flow again. Having the ability to share these thoughts and photos helps too. Now that the “hard” work of making this website is over it’ll be much harder to neglect it.
Conclusion
I am really not super proud of any of these photos (except for the one of the church). On the main screen the Velva simulation looks much more subdued than how it actually looks. Maybe if I edited them into black and white the result would be better and more useable, but I don’t want to vastly change the color profile of an already taken jpeg. The colors are way too saturated for the environment. All these photos were shot with the aforementioned XF 23mm f/2.8, a lens I’ve really come to love.
Going forward I will be catching up on the photos I took over my road trip across Eastern America and my time thus far back in Eretz Yisroel. Somehow I became a better photographer, hopefully this project makes me a better writer.