Anavarsa Castle

Last Friday I found myself with a day off and thought it would be nice to go revisit scenic Anavarsa castle which is situated atop what must be a 1,000+ foot cliff. The first time we saw it we were on an awesome rock climbing trip at the base of the cliff, saw the amazing castle, and headed back the following weekend to explore the ruins. In the photo below, the little dots in the field below the cliff are actually sheep and cows if that helps give you a sense of scale.

It was humid as hell out and I felt like I was dying of aids for some reason, so you’ll have to bare with me since I wasn’t exactly in my happy photo place. Anyways, Anavarsa dates back longer than our recorded history from the area and from what I have been told, the ruins have yet to be excavated by the Turkish government. The history can be read on the Anazarbus Wiki, but the jest of it is that the castle and settlement below pre-date the Roman Empire and if you lived there prior to our times, you would most likely die in a battle or in an earthquake while being confused with multiple name changes to the settlement; all seemed to happen constantly to this site and it is absolutely remarkable to me that anything remains at all.

I will go back and take better photos to prove to you that a lot more remains than what my pictures present, but there is quite a bit of ruined structures from aqueducts, to arch-type gates, walls, and of course the remains of a very spread-out castle. I did play a bit with my new 70-200 bokeh cannon, but I am figuring out that zoomed in above 130′ish and above and wide open pretty much obliterates the background so much that I need to actually stop up to bring in some soft details to create a more interesting background.

Lunar Landscape

This is a -1.33, 0, +1.33 exposure HDR that I then created 2 layers from. I converted the top layer to black and white and selectively colored the bottom layer. I then painted through the sky. The original picture has the hazy sky overlapping the horizon where the dirt is and that made for an incredibly blurry horizon. I set the clone stamp to about 58% opacity and lowered the flow slightly and created a nice crisp horizon by cloning the dirt in certain areas and the sky on top of the really blurry areas.

I think it fits because this entire valley looks like an alien landscape. They even filmed part of the original Star Wars here. One interesting fact about these particular formations in the shot is that they are used on I believe the 20 or 50 Turkish Lira bill.

Kumtaşı Formations

I was talking to one of the guys that was on the Cappadocia trip and he had mentioned that for some reason, the sky in his photos looked bluer than blue is allowed to look. I have the same results, this photo below is an HDR of the sandstone merged in with the actual 0 exposure sky straight from RAW to JPEG, no adjustments. It looks like we were using polarizers or cheating it in post, but for some reason, the sky just seem uncharacteristically blue here in Turkey lately. Today I looked up to see what was going on and sure enough, it looks like you can almost see the curvature of the upper layers where that ends and space begins.

Dokuz in Turkish mean 9. Doku without the z means “texture”… Çok kolay! This Turkish lesson is for my wife.. You need to study!

Blueskie

I must admit that I love a beautiful blue sky with generous amounts of cancer causing sun. After 2 years in Japan, my vitamin D reserves were completely depleted and I was not on track to get skin cancer as quickly as previously scheduled.

It is kind of fun and almost necessary to play around with the silhouette caused by the sun during the day time when you are looking up at all the raised sandstone features that dot the Cappadocia region. This one is a bit much with the blown highlights, but I still kind of like what it represents… The sun was shining!

Even the local pups in the area like to go outside and bask in the glory of the sun.

Cappadocia

Okay, this feels good. I haven’t touched any of my photos for a very long time. I completely forgot how fun it was to go through and process each shot and go back into time when each shot was taken. I need to do at least one or two each day, there isn’t really any excuse. Tonight I kind of went all out compared to what I usually process, although, I felt kind of rusty in achieving what I wanted and just did everything really quick.

Last weekend I joined a group of local photo enthusiasts on a Cappadocia tour trip specifically geared towards photography. I kind of had my doubts since I have taken a tour once before and thought it was absolute crap, plus I have been to Cappadocia many times and kind of prefer to do things on my own. This tour surprised me though. We saw everything. It was relentlessly good!

Cappadocia kind of reminds me of back home around the the Southern Utah area. Southern Utah has some of the most unique scenery that you can possibly fathom, so that is a good thing. The biggest difference is that there is deep history associated with this area. The convoluted sandstone scenery is full of ancient dwellings carved out by hand and can be found everywhere in this region. I have quite a few shots of these dwellings, but why not just show you a modern, hand-carved representation taken by my new friend The Bokeh Maker?

Did I mention that my friend The Bokeh Maker is sharp as a sword even when wide open?

There are 2 fortresses that you can climb in the area. They are massive sandstone formations jutting up out of the ground like mother natures skyscraper. Thousands of years ago people decided to carve out room and pathways within the skyscraper up to the very top. Here are 2 HDRs taken from the largest one during an amazing sunset.

Here are some cool cats I found at the top of another “fortress”. They thought it would be helpful to hold my tripod legs to steady it while I was taking shots, thus transferring every movement of their body into my shots. It was fun explaining to them how this plan was not going to work… I did let each one take turns with my camera. They thought that was çok mükemmel!

If you are into pottery, or patterns of pottery to feed your camera.. I recommend a visit to Cappadocia.

And lastly, I promised a shot of me for my sweet, sweet wife. Turkey sucks honey! I cannot stand it here.. Don’t be jealous that you cannot be here yet. It was hot in Cappadocia and I got some dust on my sensor!!!

Absent

So I just realized it has been about 3 weeks since I have taken a picture or worked on any. I am being bad, I know. I am still living out of a hotel, getting over my initial sickness that most people get when they first get to Turkey, looking for a vehicle armed with very basic knowledge of the local language, and trying to stay in touch with my wife so neither of us end up going crazy being apart for so long.

Hopefully in the next few weeks I can start finding some time and motivation at the end of the day to get back into it. Until then, here is the last shot I posted to Flickr over 3 weeks ago. This is the Kintai-kyo bridge located in Iwakuni. Definitely worth the trip if you happen to be near the Hiroshima area!