Istanbul – a first impression

February 21, 2012

Living in Nürnberg does also mean living together not only with native “Nürnbergers” but also with people from Greece, Italy, Ukraine and East European states, besides of people that relocated within Germany. But the major part of people from foreign countries come from Turkey, so that turkish language is ubiquitous on the streets of Nürnberg and Fürth. Maybe this is why Turkish Airlines offers direct flights from Nürnberg to Istanbul twice a day for a reasonable rate. And so my sister, her husband and me decided to spend a long weekend in Istanbul, an oriental world that is only separated from Nürnberg by a 2.5 hour flight.

on the airplane

With Turkish Airlines to Istanbul

Arcade near the shopping street

Arcade near the shopping street

Entrance to a Restaurant

Entrance to a Restaurant

What was obvious was the fact that roughly 13 million people  want to be fed. The main shopping street and its side roads are stuffed with kebaps, turkish fast food and fish restaurants, confectionaries and little carts selling roast chestnuts. Most of the meals contain fresh vegetables, goat cheese, white bread and nuts or pistachios.

Saray at shopping street

Saray at shopping street

 

Saray at Shopping Street

Saray at Shopping Street

Women preparing food in a window

Women preparing food in a window

It was the first time I left my Nikon D300 at home and only took the Fuji X100 with me. It is much lighter, smaller and has a superb image quality. I even dared to use the camera’s internal film simulation modes (Velvia, Astia, Provia and B&W) from time to time and saved some of the images in jpg only.

Filed under: City,Street Photography,Travel,Turkey — Tags: , — Andreas @ 10:14 AM

New York City

September 30, 2010

After we had taken the subway, two flights, a train and another subway we arrived at our hotel close to the Madison Square Park where we only dropped off our luggage and headed to the ferry to Liberty Island. It was a “once in a lifetime event” that I booked in advance – to be on the island at sunset (at least in September). So I had a chance to take a close picture of the Statue of Liberty at the so called blue hour. They gave us to eat and drink and we enjoyed strolling on this remote little island. The skyline is not very attracting from Liberty Island as it is from Brooklyn but at least for me it was an adventure to take the subway in Nürnberg and to end up at one of the landmarks of New York, which showed me how “close” the world became.
20120114-103856.jpg

I fell in love with one of the pictures I took the following days, it is a panorama of the skyline taken from Brooklyn, right at the base of Brooklyn Bridge. Despite of all my planning and dusk simulation in Google Earth before my travels my companions have to always be very patient with me. We were standing at the dock for at least one hour until the brightness of the blueish sky matched the brightness of the illuminated skyscraper windows. You could also adjust everything in Photoshop or take a HDR, but I am still too lazy for post processing.
This is the picture (four pictures stitched with Hugin).

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I do not want to make too many words about the great time that I had in Manhattan, all in all it is a vibrant city with its very own unmistakable flair.

Filed under: City,USA — Tags: , , , — Andreas @ 3:25 PM
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