Istanbul Photos

Hitting the road with our fly-by-night bus charter.

The Instigator...

Istanbul from space. Notice the current of the Bosphorus Straight as it runs out of the Black Sea. This shot confirms what I figured out, Istanbul is one friggin' huge city.

Istanbul had virtually no stray dogs. Cats, however, were literally everywhere.

These jolly butchers liked getting their picture taken.

Gordon and Dusty catching some sun.

Common meal of the trip: Doner meat wrapped up in a pita. Kind of like a gyro except fewer vegetables.

One of the first places we wandered through was the local fish market.





I must have walked across this bridge at least twenty times. It was never without scores of fishermen lining the railings.


Shortly after Gordon joined in on a round of three-card street gambling it was broken up, the ringleader tossed into a cop car.


Outside one of many mosques...


Bird seed seller.


These kids were too cute. You never see Bulgarians dressed up in bright colors like this.


Required feet cleansing outside a mosque.

Inside the Spice Bazaar.


Self portrait of sorts.

I couldn't believe these guys, making fake ID cards out in the street. They had a scanner, printer, and computer mounted on a mobile cart.

And I thought I was a skilled baker...

Turkish fashion statement.

One of two suspension bridges over the Bosphorus Straight.


So much of the city was in motion and I found myself getting into finding different ways of capturing it.

Our hotel was only a couple of blocks from this tower.


Ceiling of the Aya Sofiya mosque. The scaffolding was there because workers were restoring the support system.

A relativity undamaged fresco of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus. Must have been too high for the conquering Muslims to paint over.

The Aya Sofiya.

Sihloutte of the Blue Mosque, right across the street from the Aya Sofiya.

I wasn't able to get into the tower so I settled for some street shots before joining Greg in the jazz club.



Pretty good funk band that we listened in on from the outside, until the owner came out and yelled at us to go away.


This is the tower that we stayed by.


I got up a whole hour before I meant to on the day we took a boat tour. Good news was it gave me some good light to work in.


While waiting for Cat and Kathryn to show up I took these candids of some of the people around the docks.






Twin towers of Istanbul?

Looking out behind our boat.

This ancient fortress was impressive, even from the water.


More shots of the ancient Roman castle I hiked up to. I found it interesting that they used an alternating brick and stone structure.

Ceiling shot from inside the castle.


Shallow grave in the cemetery I passed through on my hike up.


I did manage to get some night shots of the city from down on the waterline.

So glad I had my tripod.

Went back through the fish market again and got some more good shots.



"Alright Greg, hold still for five seconds..."
I have some more shots of the crowd moving like fluid through this busy street next to our hotel. This was the last shot I took on the trip.