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.