When I entered Hagia Sophia for the first time I was stunned by the rays of light that filled the huge room above the low hanging chandeliers. Unfortunately there were already a lot of tourists walking around so that I decided to come back the next morning and to be the first inside. Hagia Sophia used to be a Byzantine Church, later a Mosque and today it is a museum.
Hagia Sophia
Early Morning at Hagia Sophia
Light Beam
Hagia Sophia - Low Chandeliers
Rays of Light in Hagia Sophia
Istanbul at Sunset with Galata Bridge (from Galata Tower)
At least for me Istanbul does not have a structured cityscape and i could not find THE view when looking into google’s picture search. But maybe this is what characterizes the city. However I was pretty sure that the “blue hour method” would work out well, as it always does. The first day we were on the Galata Tower we were too early and it was quite cloudy. The second day the circumstances were better: I had a tripod with me, it was short to sunset and the sky was clear. It is almost impossible to enjoy the cityscape from the viewing platform as it is very very poky up there so that you will be jostled involuntarily by people who want to pass you. But this did not bother me: I waited as long as I had to wait standing there with my tripod and I finally took the pictures that were later stitched with Hugin. And when looking at the result there seems to be structure: it is the mosques that dominate the cityscape. From left to right: Topkapi palace, Hagia Sophia, Sultanahmed Mosque, Nuruosmaniye Mosque, Yeni Mosque, Beyazit Tower (green) and Süleymaniye Mosque. The Galata Bridge is connecting the Old City and Galata.
Street in Galata
Tea in Bazaar
Preparing Tea and Promegranate Juice
Galata and Bosporus
Grand Bazaar
Yeni Mosque and Galata Bridge
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.
With Turkish Airlines to Istanbul
Arcade near the shopping street
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
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.
It was a magnificent journey to one of the most impressive natural spectacles, when heading to Tromsø in Norway, 350 km above the polar circle. Me and my friends we booked a flight, hotel and a car a couple of months in advance, not knowing wether we would be able to see the lights. I was told that it is not about the sun’s activity (the lights will always be visible – with variable intensity) but all about the weather. And to our surprise we were blessed with four star-bright polar days and nights!
What we basically did was to spend the day geocaching, hanging out in the shopping mall and sleeping while waiting for the sky to become a little darker, as there was no sun anyway. We then packed ourselves into the rental, drove through the underground road network of Tromsø, past the airport and went out into the western outback, where the lights of the city could not reach the sky any more. In this dark sky area we passed several well lit, though abandoned, villages, with our faces always tightly pressed against the windows staring up to the sky.
And then all of a sudden someone would cry “I see green lights…”, “for God’s sake, now stop that f****** car”. And there they were…beautiful…dancing right in front of our faces. The magnificence is as hard to describe as the depth and the dimensions of the Grand Canyon. You cannot see this in a picture, you have to experience it with your proper eyes. The pictures I took with the widest angle lens I own can only give you a glimpse on what you can expect on your own aurora trip.
Making our way to the farthest western point we reached the Sommarøy Artctic Hotel (http://www.sommaroy.no/no), an oasis in the middle of nowhere. After warming-up ourselves with a hot cup of coffee in front of the fireplace we went on and found a remote house on one of the many peninsulars that stretch out into the open sea. It was such a perfect spot so that everything we had to do was to wait for the lights to come. And when they appeared I pushed the shutter to preserve the memory that will accompany me for the rest of my life.
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.
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).
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.
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