Non the WISer...?

This week was the last exam of the semester. Finishing my first year as graduate at Weizmann Institute of Science was long and tedious work, but I can honestly say I had learned a lot. Example: when to turn an image into monochrome. How to do star trails with other bright objects in the frame. Stuff like that. A little bit of physics too. No optics courses, thank god!
Those are remarkably boring, usually. The only time when I had actually liked optics is when I realized
my macro lens does come out when focusing close and shortens in when focusing far, as suggested by the infamous 1/f=1/v+1/u formula...

The biggest difference has been in the scenery, where as my undergraduate studies I did in Beer Sheva, this year I can enjoy the grass and trees and all the wonderful greenery the institute has to offer.

A few photos I collected from this year at Weizmann:

Four picture panorama. After the mountains of Nepal (with 12-18 pic panoramas) this was a piece of cake

The old (now out-of-use) linear accelerator is a hallmark of the Weizmann Institute

Magnet hovering over cooled superconductor

The above is from a demonstration given to us by one of the researchers in the field of superconductors. The container has liquid nitrogen at 77 degrees Kelvin with a piece of ceramic superconductor in it. The magnetic field lines create vortices of current in the superconductor and the field lines get stuck, like pins in a cushion, as the magnet hovers over it.

This photo was taken in the afternoon (magic hour) using a polarizer filter (I love these! I bought a good one for 200 NIS in Nepal  and it was worth every `agora').

The cats think they own the place.

The solar tower (also out-of-use today) was used for experiments in high temperature physics

The east side of the Institute has a field of mirrors that used to be adjusted so they focus the sun light into that hanging contraption you see on the side of the tower. There the temperatures would rise to millions of degrees and all sorts of physics went on.

Taken outside the physics building with a cellphone camera. Magic hour, and lots of contrast added in Lightroom.

Studying hard at the library...

Feinberg Graduate School

This building, as well as the linear accelerator, is lit up at night in different colors.

I think it is quite obvious how I took this shot... The colors are there in real life. There are colored lights on several of the buildings, making it really easy to take colorful shots at night.

"Bad Moon Rising"

Here I placed the flash pointing at the tree to make it pop out. The flash was visible in the shot even though I tried hiding it behind a 30cm lighting fixture. Since it was too bright I just let it be part of the shot.

The green moon is due to a shift in the White Balance settings (pushed quite a bit in Lightroom).

Nightshots in the middle of the road.

There's not a lot of traffic at WIS at night, but every couple of shots I did have to move my tripod off the road. Eventually I got a few I liked and didn't even get run over!





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