Photography – Page 41 – a sibilant intake of breath

More published photos

First, it was The Oxford Student. Now, the 2007 Wadham College Gazette, produced by the college and distributed to students past and present, features two photos that I took and posted on various websites. The back cover is a photo I took of the flowers behind the cloisters last spring. Happily, they credited me for the images. Unhappily, they called me Milan Llnckyi.

Now, I can understand how a person sees Smyth and writes Smith. I cannot see how someone sees Ilnyckyj, just wings it, and writes ‘Llnckyi.’ Every single website from which these photos might have been taken (blog, Facebook, and Photo.net) includes my name in full. Incredulity aside, I have invented a mnemonic for the aid of future generations:

I
Love
New
York
City.
Kate (Happy Birthday)
Yodels
Joyfully.

Add this to the pronunciation guide, in Ilnyckyj lore. Still, I am flattered that the college found my photos worthy of printing and distributing.

PS. I really can’t be too scathingly critical. I have been double and triple checking this entry to make sure I haven’t committed the spectacular gaff of misspelling my own name.

Black and white Turkey photos II

Here are a few more of the scanned black and white photos from Turkey. I have started posting the best ones on Photo.net, but the copies available here are larger.

Topkapi palace second courtyard.

One more shot of the Blue Mosque, what an elegant structure.

Ship on the Bosporus.

Suleymaniye Mosque.

Domes outside a mosque.

Black and white Turkey photos I

I got back my scanned black and white (T-Max 400) photos from Turkey today. I have started posting the best ones on Photo.net, but the copies available here are larger.

Ivanka in the hills near Goreme.

Unique geography in central Turkey.

Student at the school we visited.

Goreme open air museum.

Topkapi Palace.

Turkey 2006 photos: sixth batch

These photos are in addition to those that have already been posted on Photo.net and Facebook.

Arches in the Courtyard of Favourites, Topkapi Palace.

The Golden Horn: Istanbul’s strategic natural harbour.

An unstable place to buy a fish sandwich.

The Blue Mosque in the evening.

Sleeping Turkish cats, at around 10:00am on our last morning.

Turkey 2006 photos: fifth batch

These photos are in addition to those that have already been posted on Photo.net and Facebook.

Goreme at night, taken while out stargazing with Ivanka.

Ussuf, the young man who beat me at basketball.

Ivanka and the special education teacher, with ping pong rackets.

Raki and backgammon.

Blue Mosque and other buildings.

Turkey 2006 photos: fourth batch

These photos are in addition to those that have already been posted on Photo.net and Facebook.

Improbable location for WiFi.

Goreme Restaurant, where we ate virtually every night.

Ihlara Valley.

Village in the Ihlara Valley.

View from Selime Monastary.

Turkey 2006 photos: third batch

These photos are in addition to those that have already been posted on Photo.net and Facebook.

Cats in Asia.

Purse seiner and gulls over the Bosphorus.

Tractor in Goreme.

Dog in Goreme.

Fairy chimneys in Capadocia.

Turkey 2006 photos: second batch

These photos are in addition to those that have already been posted on Photo.net and Facebook.

My father in the Hagia Sophia.

Arches in the Topkapi Palace, former seat of the Ottoman Empire.

Architectural detail in the Topkapi Palace.

Seal of a former sultan, Topkapi Palace.

Life preserver on a public ferry running up the Bosphorus.

Turkey 2006 photos: first batch

These photos are in addition to those that have already been posted on Photo.net and Facebook. They are being put here primarily for the benefit of people who don’t like navigating through external pages, as well as for people who reach the site by searching for images from a particular location. As an added bonus, the files linked here are quite a bit bigger than those in either of the two other places, in case anyone wants to try making prints (though you would be better off emailing me for the original files).

During my first crossing of the Bosphorus, I snapped this shot of the fluttering Turkish flag..

In Istanbul, there are cats everywhere.

This park beside the Topkapi Palace was always full of soldiers, and government cars screeched through it regularly. That said, I quite liked the trees.

Elegant arches on the side of the Blue Mosque.

One of the best thing about the grand mosques of Turkey is the incredible sense of space when beneath their main domes.

Foggy day

Along with thunder and lighting, fog is among my favourite atmospheric phenomena. The best thing about it is the way in which it reveals the characteristics of light: the diffusion around omnidirectional sources and the elegant linearity generated by point sources and sharp edges. The fact that it makes trees look atmospheric and intriguing is of considerable benefit.

The fog today is apparently so bad that they are canceling flights out of Heathrow. I find that a bit surprising, as I thought commercial jets had RADAR guidance systems for takeoff and landing, to use under such conditions. They are justified in being concerned about takeoffs and landings. Along with Controlled Flight Into Terrain, approach-and-landing accidents have accounted for 80 percent of fatalities in commercial transport-aircraft accidents from 1979 through 1991. Given how crowded the airspace around London must be, extra caution is probably warranted; I imagine they would not be taking huge financial knocks for canceling flights without good cause.

One unhappy matter photographic is that my Photo.net subscription expires in just over a week. Not to drive anyone too brazenly towards the donation page, but consider yourself gently nudged.

[Update: 22 December 2006] Many thanks to Tristan Laing for setting me up with another year of Photo.net hosting.