Pebbles From Paradise

When walking with a camera it’s often easiest to photograph what’s under your nose. This was Jane Bown’s discovery over sixty years ago.

Jane Bown’s early images depict a relationship between people and nature, rather than being landscape images per se. Even the photograph, or rather portrait, of the Molly the cow is an image of domestic livestock.

When elegant backdrops aren’t available Jane Bown will use a plain wall, or surface as a background for her portraits.

Jane Bown used far less film when photographing many of her subjects, notably Samual Becket, but it seems that established portraitists are often given the opportunity to experiment over several frames as a dialogue evolves.

This water fountain sits on a quiet road high above Turunc.There are many such points throughout Turkey where anyone may obtain free drinking water from natural springs. It’s common for a benefactor to either commission a tap, or trough, or perhaps for their family to create such a point as a memorial.

Jane Bown likes to photograph her subjects by windowlight. The Kodak sensor in the Olympus E-400 produces wonderful
subtle colours straight from in-camera .jpgs.

Paradise Pide benefits from that wonderfully painterly North facing light beloved by artists, so most photographs come out well when taken there. The food is good value too.

Turunç is its most beautiful in the Winter when clouds fold over the mountain pass from Içmiler and the place takes on the ambiance of a lakeland retreat.

Sketching helps me to see people and things more clearly, and for a photographer that skill is essential. After I scanned the images into Photoshop I just couldn’t help editing them a little, either by applying some Photoshop filters, or by using some layers to edit the final image using a lightpen.

There’s always an opportunity to take photographs, even after dark. They may not be ‘art’, or of general interest, but they are an opportunity to excercise your skills and think about how to make your images as attractive as possible.

When Irving Penn set out in 1948 to photograph La Sagrada Familía for American Vogue little did he suspect he would be met by Salvadore Dali and a funeral cortège.

Penn’s lighting and colour sense was highly developed probably in part due to his having originally trained as an artist at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art. Originally he was a painter and graphic designer only moving to photography in the late 1940s.

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The Papaya, (Carica papaya), isn’t native to Turkey but may be grown here under controlled conditions. The leaves of this tree were decayed and asked to be photographed in the style of Irving Penn.

The Turkish school year consists of two semesters. The end of the first coincides with the very worst weather the country experiences and as a result many travel under dangerous, even fatal, conditions to stay in touch with their extended families.

January/February present the worst weather in Turkey. Here are some photographs of storms at the Mediterranean village of Amos, Nr. Turunç.

The winds can get pretty high when it blows during January at Amos. A number of trees were damaged in the storms and some buildings too!

A winter landscape image of Marmaris and it’s environs by S. J. M. Bray.

The fruit from Turkish bananas tend to be small, and ripen late in the season, if at all.

The plan was to despoil vast areas of forestry in the lands around Marmaris, but the fat cats have reconned without Turunc, a mouse with teeth!

The Turkish Government proposes to issue licences for forty, or so, strip mining sites for the excavation of manganese ore from the forests above Turunc. This is what they have in mind.

The Old Road To Marmaris, Gökova When Irem first came to Marmaris with her parents this was the main road. Today it’s been bypassed by a dual carriageway a little like ‘Radiator Springs‘ got bypassed by the Interstate in ‘Cars‘. I’ve been wanting to make some photographs here for some time. This image was taken [...]

Sirkeci is the district of Istanbul where you may obtain service for your electric shaver, fountain pen, wrist watch, cigarette lighter, and of course your Brigg umbrella.