We are the Travelers….We often enjoy joining small group photo tours with less than 10 people, such as Mehmet’s. We hate seeing so many tourists wherever we travel, so we label ourselves “Travelers”. First, all the travelers in our group have common interests – a passion for photography combined with travel to exotic destinations and love of good cuisine. During these tours, many of us become life long friends, and often we meet up with the same friends on subsequent tours somewhere in the world. Often, there are a lot of shared stories, laughter, and even whining about the time to get up for sunrise shots. There are often very long days, packed with activities. Often, there’s no free time to sightsee and souvenir shop.

Sub (upper left) is a retired petroleum engineer, who has lived in India, California, Washington, Africa, and Europe, (and is a worst gadget freak than Burt!). He has also been on numerous exotic photo tours, including one to India just a few weeks after our tour ended.

Gabrielle and Michel (center-right), is a retired couple who live in Portugal. They traveled with us to Iran on an earlier trip with Mehmet. They have been on many wildlife photo tours that we secretly covet, and are phenomenal photographers. They have been everywhere from Antartica, Galapagos, Brazil, to Africa and more…Here is their website link.

Shelly (lower left), the oldest young person we know, and has more energy than we do. She has a real knack for making friends with strangers to get photos. She also hooked us on the game Wordle. You can check out her photographs on Blog.shellyrosenberg.com.

Terry is a retired research scientist from Vancouver. She is also well traveled and a very talented wildlife photographer. Here is the link to her website.

Sue and Rich (lower right), are friends we met on our first trip to Turkey 7 years ago, and also traveled with us on the Stans tour. Both of them have a great eye for composition. Enroute home to Minnesota they will stop in the Netherlands to see their grandchild. Sue’s photos can be found on her facebook under Sue Jacobson.

Burt and Evelyn (us) are documenting their travels in the form of a travel blog. It’s getting harder and harder for us to make these trips. Stairs are harder to climb, hills are trickier to navigate, and our energy level is lower. It has taken a month longer to finish processing the images for this blog. Check our blog and photo galleries.

Mehmet, our tour leader, has precisely mapped out every hour of our time from pre-sunrise to after the blue hour in the evenings. Yes, our days are filled and often we fall asleep right away, then we whine the next day about the long hours. Here’s the link to Mehmet’s website.

Trying to organize a bunch of photographers is like herding cats. Every photographer is quite independent in their pursuit of a great photo, and less interested in the history and facts of a monument or landmark that tour guides try to present. The quality of the light is more important to us.

Here is a short video to help give a better feel of what it is like to wander among the bazaar. We concentrate here on some of the various craftsmen at work, producing the wares they will then sell in their stalls.

And finally, here is a photo of the two of us. This photo was shot by Gabrielle while we were on the boat from Akdamar Island. We are already on our next adventure (Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, Australia and New Zealand), so stay tuned for more travelogue from the two of us. We hope to see these fellow travelers again on another adventure in the future!