“The variety and diversity of the pictures have succeeded to create a colorful and unique mosaic of Israel”

Yishay Shavit – “The greatest enemy of a tour guide is the routine. Trust me when I say it – I started guiding at 15 as a member of a youth organization – and haven’t stopped since.

“The greatest enemy of a tour guide is the routine. Trust me when I say it – I started guiding at 15 as a member of a youth organization – and haven’t stopped since.

Tour guiding is by nature a profession that makes you repeat your words again and again and again, and the hazard of boring a bus full of tourists constantly telling them to “look to the right, look to the left” is always there. To be both effective and inspiring you have to find a way to fight it.

My moto is – guide the group, not the site. That is how I survived so many years and succeeded not to bore the groups nor myself.

Two years ago I discovered another method. I decided to take one picture every day, and to post it in my Instagram account. That actually makes me look at the sites that I have been to dozens of times, from different angles and different perspectives.

When the group sees that you take a picture, it makes you one of them. You become an enthusiastic tourist who wants to explore the site and to take the best picture of it.

Two years makes for hundreds of pictures, and now I am glad to present some of these pictures to the public in an exhibition at Beit Shmuel, Jerusalem. The variety and diversity of the pictures have succeeded to create a colorful and unique mosaic of Israel.”