Pebbles From Paradise

Istanbul offers many incredible opportunities for spectacular photographs simply because its polluted air diffuses light beautifully during winter months.

Salep is a drink made from a flour made from the tubers of Orchis mascula.

When visiting the European side of Istanbul it was clear that across the Bosphorus it was snowing.

Traffic jams occur regularly on the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge and Bosphorus Bridges linking Europe to Asia in Istanbul, Turkey.

Abbas Ozferendeci is your No: 1 expert for organising conferences and events in Turkey,

Badem Esmesi, (Marzipan Sweets), have been made by Sevim Işgűder’s family for over 100 years in Bebek, Istanbul..

Sunset At Çavuşbaşı OK, I know it’s a corny, sentimental, picture with what appears to be pig-fencing in the bottom right hand corner, but my mother-in-law insisted that I take it, and who am I to argue. Enjoy!

Olympus E-3, 3200 ISO, Carl Zeiss Flektogon 35mm at F4.0 I’m trying to keep the techy, camera hype, posts down but this image doesn’t really fit under any other category. I shot it at night on the bus from Istanbul back to Marmaris recently. If you look carefully you can discern some colour in the [...]

Permission was given for an increase in the numbers of buildings permissible in Kumlubük. One suspects that Amos may well fall within that allocation.

Winter power cuts are a feature of living at Amos, or indeed anywhere on the Mediterranean Coast of Turkey. They occur when the winds are gale force, or there are lightning storms.

The Expo-Disk is a photographic accessory that I purchased in Istanbul a few years back. It has two functions. Firstly it can turn your automatic camera into an incident light meter. Secondly, it’s a way of getting precise white balance in difficult lighting conditions.

The winds have abated at Amos Restaurant, but the jetty is still taking a pounding. Photographs by S. J. M. Bray.

Mugla market is indeed very good.

Street photographers always seem to strike the right balance of high contrast whilst retaining essential tones.

This image is one of my favourites this month. I can’t say it was inspired by Irving Penn’s work but I think he may have approved of it. On reflection though it has an element of next month’s featured photographer’s cheekiness.

Any surface can reflect coloured light. In this instance a red curtain has dramatically changed the tone of a white wall.

One of the photographers whom I most admire is Nitsa who lives in California. It was she who coined the term ‘non-photography’ and she wrote a book about it. Hannah has a copy that I sent her for her birthday a year, or so, back and I’ve been reading it. Nitsa likes to do things [...]

Hailstones the size of tennis balls fell from the Amos skies. Trees fell damning the river, which diverted itself across our garden.

Yussuf’s front door is blocked by mud and rubble, and just look at his car!

The Olympus EP-2 isn’t as robust as the Four Thirds E-3, but it’s lighter, for travelling, and less obtrusive on the street. Duffy is this month’s featured photographer in the embedded video section.

If native americans had been allowed to continue running the show the world might well have looked very different and have far more natural resources than it has today.