Inbal luxury Jerusalem hotel, Jerusalem Live Cam

A panoramic strip from the roof of the Inbal hotel, stretched across the neighbourhoods south-west of the city centre. The picture is many times wider than it is tall.

Low stone houses, tree-lined streets and a few apartment towers run the whole length of the frame, with wooded slopes closing the horizon and the sun setting at the right-hand end of it. Individual buildings stay small at this aspect ratio — the shape of the city, not its detail, is what the lens captures.

What this camera is genuinely good for is light and weather: dust haze rolling in from the desert, cloud arriving from the coast, and the long orange hour before sunset over west Jerusalem. Once the sun is down the strip goes dark quickly.