I’ve started to give photo tours of the city – taking hotel guests off the beaten track to great places to plant their feet for photography. To that end I’ve published Toronto For Photographers and distributed it around to the big hotels. My presentation to the concierges at the February meeting of the Clefs d’Or went well. Now the tour is available through all Toronto hotels. Please let me know what YOU think of the book! And yes, you don’t have to be a visitor to do the tour!
“PLEASE SIR, CAN I HAVE SOME MORE”? You asked me to dish out more Turkey after my previous post, so here you are: a little photo album with captions. Start by clicking on the first image, and… Enjoy!!
We spent some time between official prayers to enjoy the beauty of the Blue Mosque, one of the world’s most famous
There is always a time for private prayer…
A cat guards the pulpit of the Hagia Sophia, which began as a church, became a Mosque and is now a museum. And a home for cats ;)
A workman puts renovation plans into action. (I’m a sucker for architectural plans + architecture. Annette said: “I knew you were going to take that!))
Contemporary street art pervades Istanbul where it clashes with the sound of the Muezzin’s call to prayers.
The spice market is a riot of colour and sound. My wife was thought to be Spanish…so all we heard was –
Mira! Hola! Oh! You’re American!
“Not American. So sorry. Canadian. So Sorry”.
At the water’s edge, near the New Mosque, I really loved this.
At the beginning of our Bosporus cruise a beautiful snack cart with the Islamic symbol of freedom at the top.
…and at the end, a castle overlooking the Black Sea
The simple life in the little town of Analolu Kavagi at the North end of the Bosporus
Of all the sites of Capadoccia I loved the valleys best.
A famous group of “fairy chimneys” with a typical table mountain in the background.
The top of the fairy chimney is basalt – much harder than the lighter rock below it.
The lighter rock, tufa, made cave digging possible, and so is responsible for much of the history of the region.
I found this breathtaking. A fairy land where residents lived and prayed in caves until 1982.
The town of Gorunmez which, in English translates into “invisible”
The passageway from the 2nd to the 3rd level down into the cave city. The deeper you went, the warmer it got!
The kitchen was used exclusively at night when invaders would not see the smoke. Note the charring on the upper left from the cooking flames.
I loved this beautiful, peaceful cave church where we sat & talked for over half an hour
So many paths to wander through the fairy chimneys…
So many…
And the people were as wonderful as the landscape. This woman showered us with extras when she learned that Annette was buying these for her mother. “Me mother”, she proclaimed. It was touching.
This camel seems to be on the lookout at “Imagination Valley”…
…where he might just be interested in “The Camel”. (use your imagination!)
In summer these hills are crawling with tourists. In December they can be a rare and even welcome sight.
This decorated box reminded me of Banff. Strange…
The concierge’s door at our cave hotel shows a wonderful feel for colour.
A view of the carved ceilings and the niches in our room
Young Turks spend 15 months of national service in the army. This one is in the village of Sirince, near Ephesus
The bike contrasts with the decrepit construction in this poor village.
While it doesn’t look like much, the restaurant in Sirince is as good as any we tasted
My last memory: A friendly cat peeks out over the ancient city that’s home.
It looks like Sunday will be a great day for our monthly walkabout – 1 degree and overcast. Compared with today’s -10 that’s balmy!
We’ll meet at Union Station by the statue (the one on the right) and walk the neighbourhood. I’ll cover the usual issues: understanding your camera, exposure and composition, plus managing colour balance for overcast days and making adjustments for changing thicknesses of cloud cover. We’ll also talk about HDMI – capturing a higher dynamic range than your camera is capable of managing in a single shot. I hope to see you there at 11am! For more information, click here.
Who would have thought that the Messiah would show off like Charlie Manson and have so little to say? True, “preachy” is out of fashion but he IS supposed to be prophetic. Charismatic would have been good. But bored? Boring?
The New Pretender showed off two wives (a practice he defended feebly) and a gaudy red blanky. And really – is that a ram’s horn or his penis? Sadly I left my camera that day, but was able to depend on my iPhone and the results aren’t terrible.
Only the tiniest traces of great Constantinople exist today, encased in glass in the Topkaki Museum. (“No photo!”, shout the Topkarmy of kulturpolis)
image of halberd quietly stolen from the hip
It’s been burned, buried and swallowed by successive conquerors, including this current Istanbul, this giant of 17 million that stretches all the way from the Sea of Marmara to the Black Sea, and deep into her hinterlands on both sides of the Bosporus. Rich in culture, architecture and tradition, the city is even richer in the world’s rarest and most necessary commodities: hospitality, good humour and tolerance. We’ll talk about the food later.
The view from my hotel window is symbolic of Turkey’s continuous change and constant ideals. The Hagia Sofia was built by Christians, updated by Muslims and adopted by secularists
Meet Erkan. In his early thirties, he and his wife live in an apartment on the Asian side, and there he takes us for lunch and to shop for spices, where everything is cheaper and fresher. The fishmongers fold open the gills to demonstrate the freshness of their product. The double-boiled Turkish Delights made by the Bekir Family since 1777 (in the same premises!) is strikingly better than anything in the spice market – and I sampled all but three. Lunch is picked not from a menu but from a sumptuous array of home cooked delicacies just off to the left as you enter the diner. Annette chose a traditional chicken dish. I had a dumpling of rice in the shape of a Dervish’s hat that tasted as subtle and thought provoking as Annette’s meal danced on her tongue. I had the Dervish, she had the Whirling.
Next day we left the museums and markets, and travelled up the Bosphorus. I’d fantasized about standing on the bridge between Europe and Asia Minor since I was a young geography geek – only the bridge has been closed to geography geeks and suicide wannabes some years ago. (Damn you, suicides). So the boat tour was the best I could do. Whenever we plied the middle of the strait (maybe never) I fulfilled a childhood dream by running between port and starboard shouting “I’m in Europe, I’m in Asia”, and in tribute to Robert Towne, one tearful “I’m in Europe AND in Asia!”
Hisari Castle guards the narrows where the first bridge over the Bosporus now stands
Illegal settlements have choked the Asian side of the straight with so many people that the government has built roads and delivered power and water. And that’s nothing compared with the growth of the city to the West and East. Istanbul’s subway now extends throughout the European neighborhoods and is now being built on the Asian side. So why does Rome have a handful of subway stations when the Turks have unearthed far more archeological treasures (and rarer human remains) than the Eternal City? Ingenuity. The Turks have put their subways 75 meters under ground. Can we please import their Mayor? Please?
“I’m eating my country!” Ibrahim said with a goofy smile, eating turkey & rice in his favourite diner in Ürgüp, in Central Turkey. Like many Turks, Ibrahim is Moslem, secular and graced with openness and good humour. He met our plane at Revsihir, our gateway to the Capadocia region, a land shaped by nature and carved by man. Here, millions of years of volcanic rock and ash have provided wind, water and snow with the raw materials from which they have sculpted this moonscape. But even more interesting than that is the human story. Here, the Hittites first carved their caves from the softer rock called tufa. Since then, the caves and underground cities have been continuously inhabited – from 3000 BCE to 1982. The underground city to the right is eight levels deep and connected laterally to several villages in the region. Air shafts double as wells that access spring water below. In fact the vineyards of Capadocia aren’t watered – they survive by tapping the water below. We walked down the four levels that have been restored to date. It’s thought that the caves were also connected through “trap doors” to the village houses, providing an escape for the villagers from the pillagers. For five thousand years these ingenious underground spaces have provided shelter to refugees and religious minorities of every kind. We stayed in Avanos, at a cave hotel dug from tufa and expanded into a wonderful space. This charming room was massive, and home to every kind of regional artifact – and creature comfort.
This sitting area is a tiny corner of our room - perhaps 1/6th of it
We saw Ephesus in the driving rain.
The Ancient City of Ephesus, and its plain
This ancient Byzantine city, dominated at the town centre by the library (take note Doug Ford), is a marvel. One could walk right into the lobby of the brothel and find the client rooms arrayed in the same format you would expect today. In the same format, in fact, as that of the Turkish baths we visited in Avanos.
The Central Square focused on the library, yesteryear's cinemateque
But it was worth the visit, and our double rainbow is proof.
Double Rainbow over the Amphitheatre of Ephesus
The highlight of the trip was Goreme. These photos, literally ‘stolen’ in the “Dark Church” while no one was aware (photos not allowed) had to be taken at 1600 ISO with shutter speeds as slow as 1/15th sec. With no one knowing! NB: No flash was used and therefore no harm done. (This, by the way, is the main reason to invest in a great camera like the 5D – You can steal shots wide and then straighten and crop.) These frescoes show the height of the development of cave art in the region over about 150 years. Since the people were illiterate, art was the only form of religious education. The frescoes also required a leap in technology, the artists gathering and applying pigeon droppings as the albumen base for these stunning frescoes. The Dark Church also speaks to the wealth of the donor (and perhaps the persuasive powers of the artist), who had indigo dyes brought from far away India (see “The Last Supper” on the right, above).
Constantine and his mother, bringing the true cross to Constantinople
For God’s sake, put Capadoccia on your bucket list and bring a great camera!