Photoclubalpha

I finally put some of my Turkey photos on my website so if you are interested you can take a look:

http://www.bakubo.com/Galleries%202/index.html

My website has always had two, sometimes somewhat conflicting, purposes. One, is a place to put my favorite photos. Two, is a place to put my travel photos. Those two goals sometimes interfere with each other because in order to have a reasonably well-rounded selection of trip photos I must include photos that are not my favorites. Of course, I don't use trip photos I don't like, but I must include ones that are not what I think of as the best ones. It is not a commercial website so I can do as I please. And I do. The photos are in chronological order.

By the way, if you notice a photo with an incorrect caption or a missing caption and you can help me out I would appreciate it very much!

I went in a big loop through much of Turkey going to Istanbul, Bursa, Selcuk/Ephesus/Sirince, Pamukkale/Hierapolis, Kayakoy/Oludeniz, Kas, Konya, Goreme/Cappadocia, and then back to Istanbul. I have a brief travel report here:

http://www.bakubo.com/turkey.html

Lovely set Henry. The second one is nostalgia evoking for me. I know that one is about kite flying.
It is the same in my home town too when we were growing up. We actually had a special thread of
certain length closer to the kite and we engaged in Kite fights. The idea being using the razor sharp
specially treated thread you cut off the other kite. Thank you.

Sury
P.S. Due to urbanization and high rises the sky has been crowded with concrete towers and the this
local art is being if not already disappearing.

Wow, that was a true marathon of photo-viewing!

Henry, the four gallery sets of your Turkey road trip is just brilliant. Honestly, the photos of Pamukkale (Cotton Castle, when translated to English) shots are the least tourist crowded shots of the region that I saw to date. The compositions are lovely also; the sky and clouds mirrored on the surface of the water pools. The Necropolis and the abandoned Greek town in Kayaköy, the theatre, the balloon ride and the amazing views are just great. I just love that you actally got tourist-free shots of the Cappodocia landscape othe rthan the balloons in the air which actually is very refreshing against the relief of the particular landscape.
Istanbul shots are also great in their sincere, candid takes of the people while the interiors and the rooftop views of the Galata Bridge from Suleymaniye Mosque and the interiors from other mosques are mystical.
You must have been up very early for some of these shots or maybe the weather conditions, like rain and mist kept the crowds at bay.

What a great trip! : ) Lots of smokers, young and old,...lots of cellphone addicts who just can't give their phone a rest. Lovely view of the MARMARA Sea from the hotel window; that fog I remember only too well.

You travelled like an other Turkish guy might have done, experiencing the local mini vans and night bus trips... : ) Must have been very tiring but I'm glad it wasn't an actual 'Death at the Atatürk Airport' in the end.

Glad you shared them with us. The past two hours went flyingly by while I was viewing them.

Hope you come again for other parts, like Mardin region, Karadeniz region and more.

Yildiz

Love the travel photos. And sury, what you did with kites, we did with spiders.

sury wrote:Lovely set Henry. The second one is nostalgia evoking for me. I know that one is about kite flying.
It is the same in my home town too when we were growing up. We actually had a special thread of
certain length closer to the kite and we engaged in Kite fights. The idea being using the razor sharp
specially treated thread you cut off the other kite. Thank you.

Sury
P.S. Due to urbanization and high rises the sky has been crowded with concrete towers and the this
local art is being if not already disappearing.

Very interesting! It reminds me of that movie The Kite Runner which takes place in Afghanistan in the 1970s.

aster wrote:Henry, the four gallery sets of your Turkey road trip is just brilliant. Honestly, the photos of Pamukkale (Cotton Castle, when translated to English) shots are the least tourist crowded shots of the region that I saw to date. The compositions are lovely also; the sky and clouds mirrored on the surface of the water pools. The Necropolis and the abandoned Greek town in Kayaköy, the theatre, the balloon ride and the amazing views are just great. I just love that you actally got tourist-free shots of the Cappodocia landscape othe rthan the balloons in the air which actually is very refreshing against the relief of the particular landscape.
Istanbul shots are also great in their sincere, candid takes of the people while the interiors and the rooftop views of the Galata Bridge from Suleymaniye Mosque and the interiors from other mosques are mystical.
You must have been up very early for some of these shots or maybe the weather conditions, like rain and mist kept the crowds at bay.

I think April is a great time to visit Turkey. I read it is just before the main tourist season so not as many tourists around and the weather is good and not so hot. Yes, I often got up early to walk about.

aster wrote: You travelled like an other Turkish guy might have done, experiencing the local mini vans and night bus trips... : ) Must have been very tiring but I'm glad it wasn't an actual 'Death at the Atatürk Airport' in the end.

I often see the dead lying about in airports all over the world. The staff really should do a better job of cleaning them out more promptly.

aster wrote: Hope you come again for other parts, like Mardin region, Karadeniz region and more.

Yes, I hope to go back and see some other parts of your country!

You may recall that just before I left Japan to go to Turkey I bought the new, inexpensive Olympus 9mm f8 fisheye body cap lens. I used it several times in Turkey. Although I didn't plan these at the time as I went through my photos I found several photos that I took with both the 9mm fisheye and my Olympus 9-18mm at 9mm. You might be interested in seeing them together to see the difference.

Love the interior shots Henry.

Sury

I love the mosque interiors and the Hagia Sofia interiors as well. A little more indoor lighting and your photos might have come out even more flattering, maybe incooperating more of the blue tiles' colour scheme and paterns in to the scene... but no worries, these are lovely.

Thanks for sharing.

I'll have to ask about the fisheye and the other lens though. Which is which? My guess is that the more curvelinear scene of the sample photos are taken with the fisheye while the ones where the lines and the minarets are more rectilinear are with the camera's 9mm. Am I close? : )


Lovely all, no matter lens or technique.

Yildiz

Turkey 1 #326 love the exasperated expression, great job all round Henry an amazing amount of images and diversity encompassed within, I have got to the end of #3 finally, I have no idea how you managed to take so many great images in such a wide area in such a short time without being familiar with what’s available and where everything was.
It looks like the 9-18 is more corrected than the 9 but both take great interior shots of spectacular places.
Greg

Superb, Henry, as always. I have only got throughout the first set but loving the, already. Your usual fantastic engagement with people; so many smiling faces, and then quieter caught shots where people don't look like they know they're being photographed.

Lovely scenery as well with the added interest of the back streets as well as the tourist areas. I think my favourites so far are the small plant/weed caught in the pavement crack with the sun and rain on it, and I love the fishermen on the bridge.

A lot more wide angles from you I thought? Both 9mm and 9mm fisheye must be working for you.

aster wrote:I'll have to ask about the fisheye and the other lens though. Which is which? My guess is that the more curvelinear scene of the sample photos are taken with the fisheye while the ones where the lines and the minarets are more rectilinear are with the camera's 9mm. Am I close? : )

In all cases, the first photo is the 9-18mm at 9mm and the second one is the 9mm fisheye. You can learn about fisheye lenses here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisheye_lens

Greg Beetham wrote:Turkey 1 #326 love the exasperated expression, great job all round Henry an amazing amount of images and diversity encompassed within, I have got to the end of #3 finally, I have no idea how you managed to take so many great images in such a wide area in such a short time without being familiar with what’s available and where everything was.

You mean the following photo, right? I was walking alone on the outskirts of Selcuk about dusk with the countryside just behind her. There were no people at all around and she approached me speaking Turkish. I wasn't quite sure what she was saying or wanted, but I was beginning to think she was a rather rough prostitute. Finally, it seemed like she was just asking me for money, but even that I am not sure about. I tried to be friendly to her, but communication was difficult. She allowed me to take this photo of her.

Well, when I travel whether it is Nepal, Guatemala, Vietnam, or wherever I tend to do lots and lots of wandering around. Of course, I like to see the famous sights, but I also spend a whole lot of time ambling down backstreets and in areas that most tourists never see.

Greg Beetham wrote: It looks like the 9-18 is more corrected than the 9 but both take great interior shots of spectacular places.

Yeah, the thing about a fisheye lens is that it has wonderful, surreal distortion.