The Blue Mosque at dawn.
Every holiday is a bit of a busman's holiday if you earn your living (or at least part of it) with a camera pushed up against your face, and I absolutely love that. Documenting trips is how I learnt to make photographs and I still enjoy playing the tourist and the challenge of trying to capture the essence of a place in a few frames over the course of a few days.
Because it's not "work", I like to set myself little challenges and mini-projects when I go away to make sure that I don't just go through the same motions as when I'm shooting back home; it's how I learn and develop. When Kate and I travelled to Istanbul in the summer (we were hoping to travel on trains tracing the last leg of the Orient Express route but relentless engineering works forced us onto overnight buses instead) I limited my kit to a 35mm camera with a 50mm prime lens, a forty year old 35mm point-and-shoot compact camera and a few rolls of film. I wanted to see how losing the ability to zoom in and out would affect how I composed my images and documented what I saw. Inevitably there were moments when I found myself frustrated by the restrictions that I had placed on myself and there were shots that I knew could have been better when I pushed the shutter button, but I turned off my internal auto-pilot, found some work-arounds and moved my feet more. Below is a selection of my favourites from a few rolls spent wandering this incredibly interesting and culturally rich city.
No genies. I checked.
Power cubes for city strolling.
Aya Sofia (which faces the Blue mosque) at sun rise.
The incredible marble walls inside the Aya Sofia.
Arabian lanterns in the Grand Bazarre.
Carpets for sale.
A beautiful public fountain on the Hippodrome.
Çay
Dried fruits inside the Spice Bazaar.
And mountains of Turkish Delight.
There are millions of street cats in Istanbul. This little guy had got himself stuck halfway up the stepladder outside a book stall in the market.
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