Here’s one of my shots of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul. What made me think of it? I saw a crazy report from Turkey where the whole of Istanbul is covered in snow. Never seen it that way before… check out some pics of that here.
The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul is like no other religious structure in the world. It was originally the patriarchal cathedral of Constantinople and has gone through many changes over time. For a while, it was the city’s Catholic cathedral and then after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, it was converted to an Islamic Mosque. When I walked in, I was a little disappointed to see the scaffolding, but then I decided to integrate it into the final piece, thinking of this entire structure as sort of a space station to take you to an ethereal plane of spiritual existence.
From the Worship collection on Foundation.
What a great city this is! 🙂 I was only here a few nights, so I tried to make the most of it. A lot of people warned me that it was quite dangerous and there are terrorists running around all over the place. Of course, most of those people were Westerners that listen to a little too much fear-based news. I found it perfectly safe walking around for a few days… I didn’t even have one tiny moment of trepidation.
Check out how these termites and ants are using the same pathways by using a row of guards to peacefully mark their territory.
Truce between termites(top) and ants(bottom) with each side having their own line of guards. from nextfuckinglevel
Each day for the next 20 days, I’ll be sharing my best photos from different countries. Turkey is a bit of a strange one, since I’ve only been to Istanbul so far, but I look forward to seeing more of the country!
Check out this incredible new tech for the Playstaytion 5 with the Unreal Engine.
I find Mosques often to be the most photogenic of the various kinds of religious buildings. They are all quite different and unique architecture. Another cool thing, that most people don’t know, is that you can go into any mosque whenever you want, as long the prayer services are not going on (assuming you’re not a Muslim). Depending on the country, women can go in too as long as they wear a headscarf…
I’m not even sure how stumbled upon this… well probably Reddit, but it’s quite a crazy comedy interview video! (Maybe not for an office environment :D)
I had a local friend from Istanbul take me to a cool rooftop restaurant for dinner one evening. We sat up there and dined through sunset and watched the Hagia Sophia as all the lights started to pop on. When the lights were just about perfect, I jumped up, set up the tripod, and grabbed this shot. If you have a chance to go to Istanbul, I definitely recommend it.
This looks rather handy… I’ve only been in quicksand once… but it never quite got to knee-level… so I was lucky. If I had seen this first, I would have been less panicked! 🙂
If you make it to this city, don’t miss this spot! They didn’t let me take a tripod in there, so I had to get pretty inventive when it came to securing the camera. Sometimes I would just jam it up against one of the columns… and that’s what I did here! The only way I could get it stable was in this off-center way, but decided it looked pretty cool!
I’ve now got 9 episodes up on your favorite podcasting platform… (iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify or in some regions Google Play).
I only had 48 hours there, so I did my best to make the most of it. One great thing about the city is there are several rooftop restaurants, so it’s always easy to get multiple views of the Hagia Sophia. I knew a lot about the Hagia Sophia ahead of time thanks to how many times I had built it while playing Civilization!
One of my favorite comedies is back on the air with Season 2. I think this gal Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a genius. She also wrote Killing Eve, which I recommend as well.
As far as religious buildings go, I tend to enjoy taking photos in mosques rather than churches or cathedrals. This is not a blanket rule, of course, because a few cathedrals can be rather stunning. They all get a little boring after a while, though… kind of predictable. But as you can see here, inside the Blue Mosque, the level of design and color blows away most of the rather dreary cathedrals in the world.
I have learned a lot of this through meditation and just noticing and accepting the world as it is.
Anyway, when I walked into the Hagia Sofia here in Istanbul, I was a little disappointed by the scaffolding. I wanted to experience this place 100% perfect, but, if you think about it, not many places (or people) are. So then I started thinking of ways to make the scaffolding an integral part of the artistic structure of the photo, and I came up with this. I think it’s more interesting than if it was totally clear. I could have done some Photoshop tricks (quite easily) where I flip around the top part of the photo and mask through so there is perfect symmetry, but I really like this better.
I was working on a large format book, and this photo will probably go inside. When I started looking at my previous edit, I saw all sorts of mistakes. I thought, hey, those will be easy to fix. They weren’t. I probably spent a good four hours on the clean-up of this bad boy.
