Enfeh in HDR

From the Enfeh trench over the sea, you see the cliff of Chekka.

I went to a photography work shop last year (after one of the readers mentioned I could use some help ahum . . . ), and I learned quite a bit, but the thing I found most fascinating was the HDR imaging. .

Here’s a whole tutorial on it with beautiful images. . To do it really well, you’d need a tripod. I’m just too lazy to be schlepping all that extra stuff with me on my travels through Lebanon, I already have two dogs, two kids, a picnic basket, and a camera in tow. But I was in Enfeh the other day, and these images are made without a tripod.

Through the Enfeh trench, with the pillar for the draw bridge at the end.

Enfeh is a coastal town up north, right above Chekka. I thought it’d be a beautiful place to buy a beach house, until hubbie reminded me that it’s about 4 kilometers downwind from the largest cement factory in the country. Enfeh has numerous salt pans, and is a traditional fishing village. What is really unusual about Enfeh is that it has a rocky part sticking out into the sea , almost like a peninsula. In antiquity, this was the place where people settled, as it was easy to defend. The rocky peninsula is almost separated from the main land; a deep trench has been carved out, 30 meters wide and some 100 meters long. You can see it clearly on Google Earth.  One piece of rock is left standing on which the draw bridge could rest. This way, the rock almost became an island. Who dunnit? The mayor of Enfeh (that’s how he introduced himself, the ‘moukhtar’), who I ran into roaming around on the salt pans, said it was the Phoenicians. But other sources tell me it was the crusaders. Yet another site claims it’s an ancient quarry .

There’s a crusader church (small one) standing right on the shore, called St. Catherine’s, but there’s an old byzantine church as well in the village.

And so here’s the Enfeh trench, whether Phoenician, ancient quarry or crusader, in HDR. The funky toning comes from the tone mapping, a related technique.