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.
Here are some additional pictures of yesterday’s session.
Once again I had the desire to take some self-portraits of me and what could be better than to start the year with a camera, a flash and an idea. Inspired by a portrait shown in a german newspaper-supplement I saw the challenge to reproduce the light setup in my apartment. It (happily) still has a lot of white walls, which is always criticized by guests. In this case the white wall was just good enough to serve as a background. So basically everything I did was to position the softbox with one SB-800 approx. 6ft from the floor, pointing down, so that the wall would not catch too much light. What followed was: camera on, flash on, release shutter, Mac on, sync with Ipad. And then I had to take like 80 pictures, every time interrupted by a position check on the display, until the right hand and the tablet matched the face and the hand in the picture; aarghh… it was almost driving me crazy!
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