Basilica Cistern

I decided to leave Demonicus–my trusty tripod–at home for my recent trip to Istanbul. I wanted to give my D700 a good high ISO workout since I know I will be going back to Istanbul many more times in the future. There was one site we visited that I had never visited before and I was very, very impressed with it. I really had to fight to get some usable shots though since it was the underground Basilica Cistern, which is very dark inside. It had a decent wooden rail to place the camera on, but even at ISO 4,000, I still had to take some long exposures and the wooden railing wasn’t quite cutting it since I had to actually press down on the camera to keep it balanced.

I decided to give this the HDR treatment as well, I like the way they look coming out of this camera and the cistern had so many neat textures and and cool reflections that are really brought out with HDR.

Hagia Sophia

It has been a real important week for work and I haven’t really felt like working on anything that takes brain power when I come home, but tonight I finally decided to keep a couple of synapses in my cerebral cortex active for long enough to work on some shots. I had been wanting to post some shots from the Hagia Sophia for a while now, and now here are some architectural shots from what I think is the coolest site to see in Istanbul. This one was taken from our hotel very early in the morning. It is easy to wake up early in Istanbul if you stay near the 2 major mosques.. It sounds like 10 loud speakers are pointed at your window for 5am prayer!

I was kind of dissapointed by two things when I walked into the Hagia Sophia. One, the massive scaffolding was still there 2 and a half years later after my last visit. Two, I was not allowed to climb up it! The restoration process is very time consuming from what I have read. I also have read that the dome is so massive that there has been a lot of problems in the past with shifting and movement of the dome itself and the walls that are supporting it. I think right now they are just working on restoring the mosaics on the ceiling.

I was messing around in Lightroom and came up with an alternate version of this scene. I kind of like the darker feel to it and enjoy the different perspective compared to the shot above, so here it is..

Humdrum Oranges

Not much to say about this shot taken on the streets of Istanbul other than I softened it up by reducing the clarity in Lightroom. The light cast against the oranges just wasn’t as pleasing when the focus was razor sharp. Not much else to report, but I will say though, I was coming down with a cold this week and I ate a lot of oranges and tried to overdoes on vitamin C supplements. The worst I got was a runny nose and stuffy head. Went away in about 4 days. What can I say, I love oranges.

Pazar

Even if I vehemently abhorred Istanbul, which I do not, I have to go back. I am on a mission to get the perfect shot of these glass mosaic lamps. During my first visit years ago, I failed with my point and shoot; I thought this time would be different armed with more knowledge and better gear, yet I still failed to get the shot I had envisioned. This is my best attempt, but I learned that a large depth of field is absolutely key to the result that I am after. I went in with f2.8 and found the bokeh way too distracting for me. There is just too much going on to tease the eye with such a large amount of blur.

One evening we went searching for the Spice Bazaar and thought we found it. I was confused if this was actually a dog and cat food spice bazaar because there was bin after bin of food for furry critters. We later found out that the bazaar was next door and may have been closed on Sundays, but I still felt silly. Special Kedi Maması means= Special Kitty Food. Köpek= Dog. Yummy!

When we did find the Spice Bazaar, I went all out in my Turkish Delight sampling as I tried to find the best flavors to use as a gift.. The best advice in a situation concerning Turkish Delight is to start slow and build up an iron gut that can support the sheer weight of the concoction as every piece feels like it weighs about 1 pound once it has reached your stomach. Honey is one of the main ingredients for Turkish Delight, so I present you a picture of a jar of honey found in a store overflowing with Turkish Delight.

Half and Half

On 537 AD, Christians completed the 3rd Hagia Sophia on the same ground as the 2 previous Hagia Sophia basilicas. After the sacking of Constantinople by Ottoman Turks in 1204, the basilica was converted into a mosque and imagery banned by the Muslims was then painted over with plaster frescoes.

In this shot you can see a little of both.

Currently restorers are painstakingly trying to reveal more of the mosaics while trying to strike a balance between Muslim and Christian representation.

The Hagia Sophia is far and away one of the coolest man made structures that I have ever seen and definitely a must see for any visit to Istanbul.

The Watcher

I feel like I should have deleted this shot when I first saw it.. The blown out highlights, loose framing of the subject, the fact that I wish I had taken this shot from almost ground level, but instead I am really drawn into it. I think it may be because I love silhouettes, and I honestly don’t even remember if I was purposely trying to silhouette the subject or if I actually screwed up the exposure relative to the result I had envisioned for this scene. I am guessing the latter, but I’ll still take what I can get!

I also wanted to share a link to a some photography/journalism work that I really dig while working hard at work lately. Her name is Ami Vitale and her site is full of amazing images that tell an interesting story. I like the way she usually spends time living amongst her subjects for months or years at a time. The website can be found here.

Looming

Here is the main “tourist” entrance for the Sultan Ahmed, aka Blue Mosque in Istanbul. I am not sure why there are 2 entrances since they both deliver you to the same massive room with towering dome ceiling, circular light fixtures hanging on strands strung up to the underside of the dome accentuated with the musty smell of tens of thousands of sweaty tourist feet. I was glad that a few birds made it into this shot. It almost looks infrared to me, but it is just a 3 exposure DRI converted to black and white.

Perv Shots

Perv shots sell… or so I am told. I am an equal opportunity photographer and just because some ladies happened to find themselves into a mildly interesting frame that I attempted to capture with my camera is no reason to discriminate and not take the shot and/or post online.. Right? This first one was taken at the Topkapı Palace when me and a buddy found an empty pool beside a walkway and some interesting lighting. We tried and tried to get some interesting shots, but the human subjects were not cooperating. This one was one of the few decent shots, but I had to crop a whole lot out to make it interesting.

This next one I saw these two walking up to the window and my photography senses started to tingle, but I had my 14-24 wide angle lens on and didn’t want to run up about 3 feet behind these ladies to get the shot; so I dropped my bag on the floor and rushed to switch out my lens, fired off two shots as fast as I could while still kneeling, then they walked away. This scene had massive amounts of dynamic range so I had to do a lot of work in Photoshop after trying to compress that range. I ended up trying black and white which helped the grain take on a more film-like look.

City Life

I am going to quick post up some Istanbul shots that I just processed, mostly straight out of Lightroom with minor adjustments to convert from RAW to JPEG. It is 12am right now and I am a bit tired and these shots mostly explain themselves so I won’t go into great detail about them. Tomorrow will be a good day for me because the movers are finally delivering my household goods that I haven’t seen since I left Japan. That means I can finally work on a proper computer and monitor for my shots.. or play games if I am misbehaving..

Chestnut Tweezer~

Compositioning~

Dirty Harry~

Fishtanbul~

Suspendered in Time~

The last one is one of my favorites because old couples out and about enjoying life and traveling together are alright in my book. I hope to be lucky enough to do that with my lovely wife one day!

Istanbul the II

I had a three-day weekend and headed up to Istanbul for the 1st time in over three years. The first time I went with a good friend and my wife whom I was just beginning to date at the time. We had an amazing time and I would easily say that Istanbul is only 2nd to Prague when it comes to big cities. If I was offered a job there that could support me and my wife, I would take it in a second and I am sure my wife would probably back me up on that statement as well.

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque (Blue Mosque), completed in 1616… Not even the coolest mosque in Istanbul. I should have a few acceptable shots of the coolest that I will post on the blog sooner than later.

And this is inside of the Sultan Ahmed. I didn’t bring a tripod so I had to hand hold and crank up the ISO to 4000 for this 5XP DRI shot @ f2.8. The corners are out of focus, but usually high ISO shots will turn out extremely noisy as the HDR and DRI process seems to amplify every little spec of noise. I was highly impressed with the results this D700 is turning out at such high ISO though.

Here I am trying to trying to venture out and take shots with human subjects in them for a change. Of course, Istanbul has all types of people since it is the gateway to Europe. I really dig the Middle Eastern dress that you find, but I am typically most shy about taking pictures of those who are wearing that kind of traditional dress for some reason. I’ll have to steal a few from behind I guess.

And 2 guards that were stationed at the entrance of the Topkapı Palace. I knew they wouldn’t care if I took their picture because they were unflinching statues until they were called out of their pose. I didn’t see them blink, instead they had a guy go up to their faces with a tissue to wipe away what was most likely crumbling stone out of the eyelids that were a result from such seriousness.

These two were good. I have never seen such an intense pose held so well that you wouldn’t be able to tell if they were wax figures or not.

Lots more to come. I am excited to go through and start processing the rest of my shots!

Indecisions

I have been working on the same shot to post to this blog for the past 3 nights in a row and sometimes spending as much as 2 hours on each attempt. Sometimes just staring at it wondering where to go from there. This is my 4th attempt.. I have never deleted more than 1 attempt before, but this time I just couldn’t figure out where to go with it.

The unique thing about this photo is the blue hue which is not HDR, DRI, or any color replace shenanigans. The problem is that I couldn’t decide if it had more potential than I was able to squeeze out of it. I tried HDR, DRI, converting those to B&W, straight B&W, B&W with selective coloring; then I finally decided on just some Lightroom adjustments off of the -1 exposure and a quick trip to Photoshop for some sharpening and cloning out of junk in the water. I am still largely unimpressed, but after all those hours, sometimes you just have to move on with your life!

This is the famous Itsukushima Shrine near Hiroshima on the island of Miyajima during high tide.

Bokeh Ring

I just had to post this on the blog since the default picture size on Flickr made this shot look pretty uninteresting. The more I play with the 70-200 hand cannon the more impressed I become. It definitely produces the most vivid colors straight out of the camera than any other lens I have used. I hope to give it a good workout on my upcoming trip to Istanbul in around the middle of next month.

Moar Kalesi

I am trying to keep motivated to post more photos to this blog since I have such a large backlog of photos and possibly one of the most riveting stories to tell about a boy and his camera… or not. Here is yet another shot of Anavarsa Castle that I took during a 2nd visit last weekend. This time we woke up earlier than before and tried to hit the sunset. We didn’t quite make it for the crack of dawn, but had some time to capture the nice warm hues upon the castle that is literally built upon a massive double-sided cliff as you can see in this shot.

This is a 5 exposure DRI taken at .77 EV intervals. For those of you wondering what in the hell DRI is, it is basically another way to merge multiple exposures that will result in more dynamic range than a camera sensor can typically obtain in a single exposure. DRI is a bit more natural looking than an HDR. A lot architecture and landscape shots I process, I create an HDR version, a DRI version, and then merge those into my 0 EV exposure, painting in parts for each version that I like.

Sabancı Mosque

On the weekend me and a buddy (whom I just turned onto the Darkside with a Nikon D90) rented a car for a day to visit some nearby sights. The Sabancı Mosque is probably the largest attraction to be found in Adana. It is the largest mosque in Turkey and can accommodate 28,500 people at one time!

The accompanying park has got to be about 3 km long and is very ornately decorated with all kinds of statues, fountains, gardens, playground equipment, and plenty of places for a picnic.

There were a lot of people out when we first arrived, and let me tell you about being a foreigner rolling up to a park in Southern Turkey… You become the center of that world. Everyone wants to look at you or talk to you to practice their English or just find out what in the hell these 2 white boys are doing in Southern Turkey. I was a little apprehensive about rolling up with all of my photo equipment because I already knew what to expect, but I was totally surprised to find that when they see all the equipment, especially the 70-200 hand cannon, they immediately want you to take their pictures.

Almost none of them even wanted to ask if they could see the picture, instead they were totally surprised when I offered to show it to them on the camera LCD. They didn’t even try and ask me to email them a copy of the shot. So basically this is like free practice for someone timid about asking to take portraits.

Hell yeah! This kid below was so excited that he literally wet himself. Well, maybe he did it before he saw me, but I didn’t even notice until I got home and looked through my shots. I had to cut out about half the picture and clone some extra shirt to spare the poor kid some embarrassment.

This last shot isn’t the most interesting shot in the world, but what is interesting is that this was taken at ISO 4 million (4,000 for non-sarcastic types) and still looks pretty damn acceptable and let me take this at 1/60 hand held in the middle of the night @ 105mm! I did run this through Noise Ninja, another great little program.

Anyways, I need to keep going back to practice portraits because I have learned it is a lot more difficult than I thought it would be, especially when using my external flash. I have figured out that the exposure meter is basically worthless and trial and error or experience is what you really need to just get the exposure right.

Tumlu Kalesi

Tumlu Castle is an interesting castle. It situated above the small town of Dumlu and can be seen from both Anavarsa Castle and Snake Castle. It basically looks like someone built a castle on top of a single boob out in the middle of a large plain. Here it is from the bottom, although it doesn’t really show how much this little hill sticks out around such a large flat area.

This is the second time I have visited Tumlu and so far I have been awed by the dark blue hues of the sky with each visit. It is almost like you are looking off into the edge of space. Today was no different, the castle is pretty cool, but the sky contrasted against the fields is what really drew my interest. I am not sure if the fact that you can see the curvature of the Earth has anything to do with such dark blue skies here or not? But that curve in the photo certainly isn’t all from my lens.

And here is yours truly trying to figure out how to use my SB-600 flash. I am a complete noob when it comes to properly using this thing. It took me about 5 tries to get the exposure right for the outside window, the inside of the castle room, and myself. I need to post a picture of me every once in a while or my lovely wifey in Japan is going to forget how magnificent I am!