The Laos Fire Boat Festival / Festival of Lights is one of the most spectacular festivals of Laos. It’s more correctly called the Festival of the Boats of Light, or Boun Lai Heua Fai in Laos. It is essentially the celebration of two things – the beginning of the dry season and the end […]
Turkey #8 – Travelers
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 […]
Turkey #7 – Gaziantep
We are enroute to Gaziantep, the sixth most populous city in Turkey. It is a diverse community populated mostly by ethnic Turks, plus Kurd and Syrian refugees. When we drove through town, we saw substantial damage from the Turkey-Syria 7.8 earthquake, which was followed by a 7.7 after shock, on February 8, 2023. We learned […]
Turkey #6 – Adiyaman and Mount Nemrut
We left our hotel in Aidiyaman by 2:00 AM to climb Mount Nemrut to see the sunrise. Mount Nemrut is 7000 feet high and was designated a World Cultural Heritage site in 1987. The site is covered with statues of the gods, and some consider this site as the 8th Wonder of the World. When the sun […]
Turkey #5 – Sanliurfa
In Sanliurfa we photographed the biblical Abraham’s Pond and also Abraham’s Cave and Mosque in the afternoon. We visited Karahantepe, an archaeological site in Sanluirfa, where we saw the oldest structures that have been discovered, and were built some 12,000 years ago. This was the first temple built by a mysterious civilization and considered the cradle of our […]
Turkey #4 – Mardin
Above is the view of the ancient city of Mardin in South Eastern Turkey, from our hotel balcony. The minaret did not light up until well after the blue hour ended, which is why the sky is black. Mardin is a UNESCO protected city and one of the most significant cities located in SE Turkey. […]
Turkey #2 – Kars & Dogubeyazit
We photographed the ruins of the old Armenian capital of Ani located right on the border between Turkey and Armenia. Ani is an old fort situated at the top of a massive hill, and is currently being restored. We met shepherds with their cattle still working the hills. There are impressive ruins of Armenian churches […]
Turkey 2023 #1 – Istanbul, Uzungöl and Erzurum
We have just started the “off the beaten track photo tour of Eastern Turkey” with Mehmet Ozbalci of Turfantastik. This will be our sixth trip with Mehmet since discovering him nearly a decade ago on our first tour of Western Turkey (click here to see the list of 26 blog posts from that trip). The […]
Chile 3 – Easter Island 2
We went out for a sunrise shoot again this morning. Kim did some modeling for us at one site (lower-left), and as we were leaving the crater, Marc (our guide) posed for a quick shot (lower-right). This was another morning where we were lucky to get some color in the sky (top-middle and top-right). Also, […]
Chile 2 – Easter Island 1
After viewing the total solar eclipse last week, we decided to spend a week on Easter Island, which was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1995. Since this island is owned by Chile, it is considered a domestic flight, despite taking 5 hours to reach this Polynesian island. Chile is the nearest landmass, […]