It’s not easy to photograph people in Istanbul. Not if you want portrait kind of pictures.They don’t like being photographed. It’s their religion and you should actually respect that, especially when it’s women (even if I didn’t in this case). I miss India. They practically beg you to take their picture there. I still have a couple of people shots and a series of old guys fishing is coming up later.

I’m planing a new trip, to Norway. I have talked about Norway for a long time now and this summer it will finally happen. I will drive my own car up there, pack it with camping gear and live cheap by sleeping in tent and sometimes making my own food. Norway is a really expensive country. Not sure for how long I stay there, one, maybe two weeks I think. I will mostly shoot landscapes but I wouldn’t mind running into some surfers or downhill mountain-bikers and shoot some actions as well.

Here’s some interesting statistics. At least I thought it was interesting. I have been photographing for three years now. The first camera I bought was a Nikon D70s. I had it for a year and shot 9000 pictures with it. Then I bought a Nikon D200 that I also had for about a year and I shot 18.000 pictures with that camera. Now I own a Nikon D3 and I’ve had it for a year now and already shot 24.000 pictures with it. 9000, 18.000 and 24.000. So, I guess I will shoot at least 30.000 pictures in the coming twelve month.

I’m having such a NAS (Nikon Acquisition Syndrome) on a Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 lens right now! But, my new years vow for this year was to not buy any new expensive camera equipment. I did sell my macro lens a few days ago though (never used it). If I sell one lens to buy a new one (even if it only pays for 1/3 of the price for the new lens) am I still braking my new years vow?

Nikon D3, 35 mm, 30 sec, f/14, ISO 200

I was down at the beach tonight, just to shoot something. The moon was also up so I tried to do something interesting with that instead of shooting straight into the sunset. Had both a ND4 filter and a polarizing filter on my camera to get the longest exposure possible to flatten the water. I would have used only a ND8 filter if I had one.

I actually lowered the saturation on this one (that’s a first for me). It’s still really blue but it was way to blue before. I don’t know where the idea of making this a vertical panorama came from (if that’s what you call it) but it works great for this image I think.

That’s basically all I did in post-processing on this one. Oh, I almost forgot, I also removed 48 dust spots. Yes, I counted them. I’m cleaning my sensor tomorrow.

Nikon D3, 17mm, 1/80, F/13, ISO 900

You might wonder why it’s called the blue mosque since it’s not blue. If you go inside you will figure it out. The walls are decorated with blue tiles. Actually I didn’t really get that “wow, it’s blue!”-feeling when I entered the mosque. More a “that’s a really red carpet”-feeling. The mosque is lit sometimes with blue lights though but not when I was there.

I didn’t have my tripod at this time. I wasn’t at all prepared for this nice sunlight on just the top of the mosque. But I only needed to raise the ISO to 900 to get a fast enough shutter-speed (1/80) which again is maybe a bit unnecessary fast at this focal length and I set the aperture to f/13 to get everything sharp. I like the composition in this one. Framing the main subject with another subject within the frame of the image is a well tried out formula that almost always works.

Not much to say about post-processing on this image. I set the tone curve to strong contrast and I lowered the exposure just a bit (-0.25) to get more details in the sun lit part of the mosque.

Nikon D3, 85 mm, f/2, 1/2500 sec, ISO 200

Many mosques has these places outside where people can wash themselves or just drink some water. I used it myself sometimes to just cool down with some cold water in my face. Istanbul is really hot this time of year. I didn’t drink the water though.

I shot this images with my fixed focal length 85 mm f/1.4 lens. I love that lens! Doesn’t get any sharper and you can’t find any lens that gives a better bokeh (out of focus rendering). At f/1.4 the depth of field is really shallow so I stepped it down to f/2 so at least the guy in the foreground was completely in focus.

I didn’t do much in post. Cropped it a little bit on the top and on the right side and added some contrast and clarity.

Nikon D3, 17 mm, f/22, 1/80, ISO 1000.

Or simply German Fountain as Wikipedia calls it. It’s in a park next to the blue mosque in Istanbul. You can read more about it here if you are interested.

From now on I’m going to put more effort into writing about how I shot the pictures I post here. Which focal length, f-stop, shutter speed and so on. And, even more importantly why I used a specific setting and what I was thinking of when shooting the picture and so on. I hope this will make the blog more interesting.

I shot this one with my 17-35 mm f/2.8 lens at its widest angle. I have been experimenting a lot lately with having the sun in the image, getting that flare thing. I think it gives another dimension to the image, makes it a bit more interesting at least. I stepped down the lens to its smallest aperture which on this lens is f/22. That’s what makes the sun star-like. A bigger aperture (smaller f-stop value) would just make it a round white thing. I’m not really sure how to get nice flares. Those big and round things that you see sometimes. Probably depends on the lens too. I guess the lenses today are made to remove flares so maybe it’s better to use an old lens when you want that effect.

I had my camera set to auto-iso with slowest shutter speed of 1/80. Because I stopped down the aperture so much the camera raised the ISO to 1000. Not a big issue with my Nikon D3 but to be perfect I should have shot this at 1/30 instead and a lower ISO.

What about the composition then. Not to happy about it actually. I walked around this fountain a couple of times trying to get a good angle but did’nt quite figure it out. This one is too centered but it was the best I could do with this subject.

In post using Lightroom I changed the camera profile to vivid. I really like that profile when I want shiny, glowing and vibrant colors. Changed the tone curve to strong contrast and added a bit of clarity (+22). Finally I wanted a bit more blue in the sky so I went into the luminance tab and darkened the blues a bit (-12). That’s it.

This one is from inside the same moqsue as the previous image. That much I know but still not the name of the mosque.

If only I knew which mosque this was. I have visited so many mosques this weekend and now I realized that I probably should have taken notes on which one I visited at which time and so on. I guess I figure it out somehow when I do some back tracking on where I’ve been this weekend.

Istanbul highly exceeded my expectations. What a nice city! Old nice houses. Small cobblestone roads. Lots of water everywhere. Mosques in every corner. Bazaars, spice markets… and I didn’t have time to visit half of the things I wanted to see.

Photography vise it was a bit so so. It’s not easy to just quickly visit a new place for three days and get great pictures. Then I’m also in a period right now that I’m not really satisfied with any picture I take for some reason. I saw this mostly as a scouting trip when it comes to photography. There are also so many sights that I wanted to see so my focus was not 100% on photographing. Overall it was a pretty cheap weekend trip so I’m sure I will go back and try to focus on just one thing to photograph.

I stayed at hotel Grand Peninsula. Very nice hotel with awesome breakfast buffet on the roof top terrace with nice view over Istanbul. Got a cheap small room in the basement for 35 euros incl. breakfast. The normal price for a single room during high season is 50 euro.

I have lived on cheap kebab from food stalls on the street for the whole weekend so my stomach is not feeling that well right now. It was cheap though and tasted delicious at the time so I think it was worth it.

Anyway, more pictures are coming as I go through them.

The t-shirt looks nice and money goes to a good cause. If you are attending Scott Kelby Worldwide Photo Walk then it’s a no brainer. Go get one now! Read more here. Of Course I got the one with “Leader” on the back

Leaving on Thursday and going back on Monday. That gives me three full days of photographing in what looks like a very nice and old city. If anyone has any advice on what not to miss apart from the obvious things that is in every guidebook then please let me know.

Here’s a well written article with even nicer images of Istanbul. It’s in Swedish though. I did some googling on the photographer and found that there is a book out called Urban Safari by the same writer and photographer as this article. Actually this article is taken from the book. I made an instant order.

I will use the same setup as I used in India:

• Nikon D3.
• Nikon 17-35/2.8.
• Nikon 50/1.4.
• Nikon 85/1.4 (Might leave this one at home).
• Nikon 70-200/2.8.
• Acer Aspire One.
• Two Western Digital Passport 250GB (one backing up the other).
• Polarizing filter. 77mm and a step-up ring for the 50 mm lens so it will fit that one too.
• Neutral Density filter. Not sure there is a need for it but it takes no space.
• Lowe Pro Classified 200 AW (Shoulder bag).
• Tripod.
• A bunch of 4GB Sandisk Compact Flash cards.

I think that’s it. Have I forgotten anything?

I visited a place called Tolarpsfallen today. It’s at Fylleån in Halland outside of Halmstad. The water is pretty rough there and I wanted to try my new ND filter and shoot long exposures of the water. ND (neutral density) filters basically dims the light, I guess you can describe it like that. Put one on and you get a longer exposure time than you would have gotten without. That’s an even simplier way of describing it. Probably most used when shooting water and you want that smooth look of the water.

Btw, Fylleån translated to English is drunk river I have tried to google why it’s called that but haven’t found any info on it. Does anyone know?