Türkiye

Here is another post with some pictures from my archive dating back to my time spent living in Turkey for a year and a half from late 05-07. Turkey is a country I absolutely fell in love with. It is also were I met and fell in love with my wife. We traveled all over this country during our time there and were continually taken aback at how diverse the geography of this country is and the amount of historical sites and relics spread throughout. The people are the most hospitable bunch I have ever come across and the food.. Kebabs, ekmek, and sahlep. Have I said anything about a long soak in a Turkish hamam (bath) yet?

This first picture was taken with my first digital camera I have ever owned, the Canon A80, one that is still going strong. This is Anamur Kalasi (Castle) which was started by the Romans in the 3rd century. This was one of the best preserved castles of the many that we visited and it sits right on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea nearby the resort city of Alanya.

This picture is from the top of 7,001 ft Mt. Nemrut. The actual peak is about 60 ft above these statues and behind them out of the frame of this picture are the stone bodies that these heads have since separated from over time. It is believed to have been built around 62 BC, but relatively little is known about the origins of this site. This was taken with my Panasonic DMC FX-01 which was a pretty lousy camera for anything but bright conditions.

I will be posting a few more pictures from my Turkey archives in the future and if all goes well, I will be back in Turkey in a little over a year from now for another year of exploration; this time with a real drive to capture the amazing sites and scenery with my improved photographic drive and knowledge.

The Process

My wife serves as a photographic consultant for a lot of my photos. Usually I will have two versions of the same photograph with varying levels of processing. I need her to balance my preference out because the synapses in my brain are definitely more excited by scenes that contain some element that you would most likely not see with the naked eye if you were standing at each scene. She prefers a more natural or lifelike look when viewing photos. Eventually one picture makes it to my recycle bin and the other goes online.

Tonight I over ruled her and this processed abomination won over the realistic looking version. I created a DRI out of 3 exposures then applied some sharpening and LucisArt ’sculpture’ processing to it. Then I imported it back into Lightroom because I really like the ease at which it allows you to selectively desaturate your work. The 3 most important sliders to achieve this look are blacks to about 60, vibrance to 40, and saturation to -70. From there I slightly tweak each slider and the individual color channels. This look makes for some pretty neat portraits as well.

Bizlicious

I took a trip to Akasaka last Sunday with the wifey. She wanted to see one of Tokyo’s renowned hair stylists so she could show up and ask for a haircut and style that would be most appropriate for her facial structure and hair type; the kind of makeover you see on TV where they tell you how they are going to cut it instead of the other way around.

I dropped her off and took a little walk about to an area I had been before. For once I left my tripod at home and really, really regretted it. Pretty neat little area, but I still keep getting my ass kicked by my D80 overexposing shots, but on the LCD screen they all look like they are spot on. I need to permanently dial it to -1 EV whenever I am using spot or center weighted metering which is about 95% of the time. Luckily, I bracketed a lot of shots and ended up with a few that should turn out okay.

And if anyone has a wife with naturally curly, caucasian hair and was wanting to get a ‘makeover’ from a trendy stylist in Tokyo.. Well, 3 hours later, wifey looked like someone put a high-powered tazer in her hair and juiced it up with 1,000 volts of electricity. Basically, what I am saying is… Beauty is subjective!

The Real Deal

We took a trip to Krabi, Thailand back in Nov/Dec ‘07 and let me tell you… That place is the real deal paradise if you are a fan of oceans, beautiful scenery, and warm weather. Krabi was the perfect hub to cheaply charter a long boat to many of the different islands and beaches, many of which were relatively devoid of crowds. Krabi seemed like a good alternative from the very crowded cities of Bangkok and Pataya, and we were never once bothered by lady boys or sex trade workers, which is always a plus in my book!

I finally earned my PADI diving certification so I could dive with wifey on future trips. I highly recommend Krabi Divers if you are in the area. Great price, very friendly staff, and brand new gear. The Andaman Sea had extremely clear water and plenty of diverse sea life to watch. It ended up being a lot more fun than I thought it would be.

This trip was the reason I purchased a DSLR and became really interested in photography as a hobby. My newer Panasonic DMC-FX01 was a noise factory and ended up getting a ton of dust in the sensor along the way. This was highly frustrating for me and after seeing pictures from a friends D80 at work in France, I was done with sub-par point and shoot cameras.

This is one of the few shots that came out okay; the rest need tons of work to repair, and I wasn’t really thinking beyond snapshots at the time anyways.

Ballistic Missle

This show was pretty amazing. The trainer was launched about 25 into the air by the whale (could have been a very large dolphin, can’t remember) by standing on its’ nose/mouth area and then going deep and then shooting straight up out of the water like a human ballistic missile. Bad.. Ass..

This picture isn’t all the impressive to me, but the trick was, so I had to post it. This wasn’t even the apex of of height he reached either, I was kind of amazed at what he just did which kind of kept me awestruck for a moment when I should have been sniping.

Sea Paradise

On Sunday we visited the Yokohama Sea Paradise to pretend like we are marine biologists/photographers. I was highly impressed with this aquarium! They have a pretty big variety of sea life to watch including polar bears. They also had a pretty amazing show with not only the animals performing stunts, but the handlers were doing some pretty neat tricks with them as well.

We both shot a ton of pictures, but the lighting was very low as to not blind the sea life that is not always use to bright light; that coupled with the speed at which they like to swim around the massive aquariums made it very, very difficult to get any decent shots that are even half way sharp. The shot below is one of the many blurry shots I took, but I thought these tubes inside the aquarium were very interesting.

Takao Serious

Well I have barely touched my catalog of photos that need to be processed despite the fact that this is my first week I have that I am not enrolled in any classes for over a year and a half. And here I was thinking that I would be catching up on all of them! Well here is a quickie from my Takao Firewalking Festival series. These guys have quite the serious look on their face, excellent victims for a photo sniping!

Takao Firewalking Festival

It all started with a pyromaniac magician, he was trying to use his black magic with three finger vulcan grip to start a fire, but all he was getting was smoke.

Eventually this unimpressed monk who harbored great disdain for vulcans bust out his giant match he had painstakingly crafted by hand over the last century. He lit it and…

I think this picture pretty much sums up the crux of the event for me, amazing! You should ask my wife if it is a good idea to go to a bonfire the size of a house while wearing a puffy down jacket.. Only a few holes burned into it before we backed away.

We arrived on time for the beginning of the event, but that was an hour or two too late for a front row spot, which would have been perfect for taking pictures without heads, arms, cameras, little Japanese guys standing on step ladders, and 8 foot tall tripods in the way. My height advantage in Japan proved useless and I ended up with barely any clean shots without any of the aforementioned items in my pictures. We will definitely make sure this does not happen next year! I highly recommend anyone in Tokyo checking this out due to the amazing photographic potential you could have if you claimed a spot in front of the crowds.

Warmer Days

I have not been out shooting since I last visited Odaiba about 2 weeks ago due to the constant rain, cold, and snow we have had for nearly as many days. This weekend we are headed to Mt. Takao for their annual fire walking festival. I am hoping for decent weather, but then again, maybe the entire point of the fire walking festival is to sacrifice the soles of human feet to the sun God in hopes of better weather.

Here is to warmer weather, or at least maybe if it snows, it will start sticking to the ground instead of melting right away!

Rainbow Bridge

This shot was take from an amazing spherical observatory within the Fuji TV building in Odaiba. We were in a hurry to get up there before the sunset was over, thus I neglected to get any worthwhile pictures of the outside, although, I will definitely be heading back to photograph that architectural monster.

Inside the sphere they were cranking their lights up for a TV show that was about to be filmed making the windows a reflection hell. I shot a ton of shots trying to get the bridge without picking up the reflections. This one still had them, they were just easier to remove than my other shots. In hindsight, I probably should have tried using my CPL to help remove the reflections.

When in Doubt

When in doubt, desaturate.. Japan seems to lend itself very well to a desaturated/selective desaturated look; or at least I should say that it appeals to me. Whenever I have a shot that I am not quite sure how to process, I usually play with the saturation color sliders in Lightroom. Quick and dirty; usually I am happy with the result such as this one taken at Matsumoto Castle.