I also do not want your picture because if you are in my shot and I want to sell it, I either must figure out how to clone you out of the shot or I cannot sell the shot.  So it is in my best interest to take steps to assure that you (and by “you” I mean any one of the other six billion odd people out there) are not in my photograph.

The problem is, when traveling people are like locusts.  Especially if you travel to a popular destination, they are everywhere.  They walk in front of you while taking a picture.  They climb monuments you are trying to take a picture of so that their friend can take a picture of them at the top of a 300 foot tall structure with a wide angle lens.  The new cameras in cell phones are even worse, as it is generally not possible to do a quick shot.  The user stands there for awhile, trying to get the picture he/she wants on the screen.  Then the picture doesn’t come out so he/she tries again, while you are waiting patiently to get a real picture.

Unfortunately, unless you are an emperor or dictator, you cannot do anything about this.  You can plan things so you photograph when the least number of people are around – such as early in the morning or you use your own transportation so you arrive between the tour buses, but for some sites large crowds are unavoidable.

Patience goes a long way here.  Very often, when I want a particular shot I will take out my camera, frame my shot, then wait for the best moment.  That is what I did for the first shot in this blog.

The only problem that sometimes happens is others see my large SLR and think “there must be something interesting there”.  So they take out their cameras and shoot away.  I do not mind this, except when by taking the shot they wind up in my shot.  As I often use my 16-35 2.8 and they often have small compact cameras, this is too often the case.  I won’t characterize stereotypes here, but after traveling and photographing for awhile, you can often get a general idea of the kind of people who do this.  Most of them are part of large tour groups who blindly follow their tour guide from place to place.  In this case, I just wait for the crowd to pass and then aim my camera and take my shot – by which time they can’t get back to take the photo for fear of losing their guide.

Of course, as I travel with two kids and my wife, this is often not possible and they lose patience with me long before the shot is ready.  Therefore, I often need to use tactics that take less time.

The two things that work best for me, which I learned while vacationing in Mexico – where the crowds were the worst I have ever seen – are to either go long or go wide.

For the shot above, there were about twenty other people in the room with me but I managed to wiggle my way to in front of this cave painting in Cappadocia and get my shot.  No, I did not use a flash (which the others in the room would do whenever the guard was not looking).  In this case it helps to have a camera that can do ISO 3200 without much noise.  I used my 16-35 to take the shot.

Using a wide angle lens works best when you can make sure you are closer than anyone else to the subject.  This actually worked out quite well in Chichen Itza as people are not allowed to climb the ruins any more. 

It does not work as well when people are allowed to climb the ruins.  In those cases, you have three possibilities.

1) Frame the shot without them.  If the people are at the bottom of the ruin, you can photograph the top.  Of course, this often doesn’t work as they are spread out over the ruin.

2) Wait for the crowd to be lower.  As I mentioned before though, this often isn’t an option or won’t work.

3) Wait for the people to get in a cloneable area.  If the person is in front of something that doesn’t have much detail, I will take the picture knowing I can clone the person out if I want to.

The other technique is to go long.  In this case, you are a distance from the subject and use a telephoto to get the shot.  Of course, if people are climbing over the object you will still need to be either patient or clone them out.

I used this technique to get this shot of the Blue Mosque – which usually has a throng of people around it.

I deliberately aimed up slightly to avoid the numerous people walking around.  The other nice thing about using a telephoto is you can capture the detail of the building, which many people often miss.

For a telephoto, I most often use my 70-200 4L IS.  I also own a 100-400 but use it far less frequently.  The greatest thing about the 70-200 F4 is its weight.  It functions great as a walk around lens and the IS is amazing.

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About a month ago, my wife, kids and I traveled to Turkey for seventeen days. We spent time at three main places – Antalya, Cappadocia, and Istanbul – in that order.

First up was Antalya.  We really liked Antalya, but the six days we spent there were probably one day too much.  Five days would have been much better.  The old town is very nice and I had a lot of fun walking around one morning, getting shots of the interesting houses there.

We spent a good deal of time there going on day trips and saw Kekova, Aspendos, Perge, Myra, and Termessos.  Perhaps on future posts I will go into these in more detail, but they were very interesting Greek and Roman ruins and I got a lot of shots I am very happy about.

Some of the minuses in Antalya were that within the old city there weren’t a tremendous amount of things to do.  We did take the boat ride and it was nice walking around in the old city, but most of the activities are outside the city.  We did love our hotel there – nestled in the old city.  Staying in the old city was also much better than staying at one of the huge resorts along the coast – which aren’t Turkey at all.

The other major problem we had, which we had throughout Turkey, was the habitual lying.  It was close to impossible to get any kind of truth out of the people who deal with tourists there.  For instance, we thought we might pick up a nice carpet there – as we had heard that the selection and prices were great.

First, I will give you the hard fact.  Unless you are a carpet expert, I would absolutely not buy a carpet in Turkey under any circumstances.  The carpets are expensive compared to places like Dubai and the majority of carpets are fake.  By fake I mean they are manufactured by machine in China.  This is true for many of the high end rugs which are advertised as Turkish silk but are in fact made by hand or sometimes by machine in China – where the labor is much cheaper.

Of course, figuring out which rugs are fake and which ones are real is close to impossible.  Real rugs exist there, but you cannot trust anything the carpet dealers will tell to you.  Many carpet dealers there are happy to point out tricks towards telling what types of carpets are fake – and many of these tips helped us.  However, once you piece together all of the different tips from different dealers, you’ll realize that determining the real carpets from the fake is close to impossible.

I will end my discussion of that and move on to Cappadocia, which was by far our favorite part of the trip.

There are three things that any visitor to Cappadocia must do.  If you do not do these things, IMHO you have not properly visited the place.

1) Stay there at least three days.  There is simply too much to see there.

2) Stay in a cave hotel.  We stayed at Kismet Cave House and it was one of the most interesting places we have ever stayed.

3) Take a balloon ride – even though they are expensive.

We rented a car and drove from Antalya to Göreme, which was an interesting drive if you discount our insane GPS which we wound up just disregarding.  We also used the car around Cappadocia – which worked out very well.  We were able to spend the amount of time we wished at each place and we missed many of the huge tourist buses.

The whole region is just spectacularly beautiful and deserves its own post in the future. In particular, the owner of the Kismet Cave House chatted with us often, served as our guide around the area, and my kids played with his kids and his new puppy.  In the end, all of us had a great time in Cappadocia.  People were also much nicer and honest in Cappadocia than in Antalya and Istanbul.

The trip ended in Istanbul, where we spent seven days.  Again, one day less would have been great here.

There are a number of very interesting things to see around Istanbul – the Haghia Sofia, Dolmabahçe Palace, the Blue Mosque, Topkapı Palace, the Basilica Cistern – and I absolutely would not visit it in two days like many of the cruise ship passengers we saw.

We stayed near the Blue Mosque, which for tourists is probably the best place to say as it is within walking distance of most of the interesting sites.  Interestingly, the best hotels in Istanbul are far away from the action, while the hotels closest to everything were more moderately priced.  Go figure.

The biggest disappointment in Istanbul was the Grand Bazaar.  Although it truly is quite large, as stated with the carpets a great number of items there are fake.  The prices are also very high compared to other countries we have visited like Jordan, Dubai, Malaysia, and Thailand.  We were excited about seeing the Grand Bazaar, but in the end we didn’t buy too much both due to the prices and due to the fact that we could not tell the real items from the fake ones (which is fine if prices are very cheap – but when they are expensive you at least want something real). 

Even the fake clothing was a problem.  Obviously they do not have real Prada purses and even they will tell you that – but it was difficult to determine the real quality of the fakes they offered.  My wife, who loves fakes, feels that Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand had the best quality fakes for the best prices.

In the end, while the lying and deceit certainly put a damper on our trip, the sites more than made up for it.  It was also a good location for our kids, as Turks tolerated our kids misbehaving very well – much more so than in the US, England, or France. 

At the end of each vacation, my wife and I rank the vacation we just went on.  I would rank this vacation third – behind Peru and Dubai.  It is just ahead of Thailand and much better than the Riviera Maya (Mexico) vacation we went on last year – which we placed near the bottom of our list.

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I am certainly no expert in pigeon shots – these being my first attempts – but the following is what I did learn.

First, it is obvious here that a fast shutter speed is necessary.  I used 1/3200 in order to get the flying pigeons in midair.  I probably could have gotten away with 1/250 to 1/500 for the kids running around, but pigeons move quite a bit faster and my first attempts had the kids in focus surrounded by blurry pigeons – which didn’t look so good.  By using a much faster shutter speed, the shots looked a bit better.

The other thing I did was use my 580EX as a fill flash.  Due to the high shutter speed, I did not diffuse it at all but aimed it straight at the subject – one of the very few times I ever did this.  Despite the high shutter speed, the flash definitely helped – particularly in lightening the pigeons a bit.  In my first shots the pigeons were quite dark.  It also helped with the faces on Eitan and Nathan – removing some of the shadows.

What I found rather humorous was how Eitan and Nathan made their own terms for the pigeons.  A large group of pigeons ready for scaring was called a “pile” and they constantly ran around searching for piles.  They still ask if there is a place in Seattle where we can chase pigeons, but I suspect due to health issues and such those places are very rare here.

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After nineteen days of travel in Istanbul, Antalya, and Cappadocia, we are finally back!  Actually we got back a few days ago, but it has been difficult getting back to this time zone and taking care of various issues.

The trip was very interesting and was one of the better trips we have taken.  Everyone had fun and I set a personal record with over 2000 pictures taken and 80GB of data.  Rather than discuss at length what we did, I thought I would cover what went well and what did not in terms of the photography planning I did for the trip.

What went well

Canon 100-400 lens

This was my first vacation with this lens, and it was very useful.  Admittedly, I did not use it nearly as much as my 70-200 F4 IS or my 16-35 2.8 II but I did use it about 15% of the time.  In particular, it was very useful during the balloon ride and when on sightseeing boats.

Slingshot 200 bag

This was the first vacation where I used this bag and it was certainly very handy.  I used it for walking around town and carried my 70-200 F4 IS, 16-35 2.8 II, and a 580EX II flash.  Sometimes I also added my 50mm 1.4.  The bag was very light and seldom caused problems.

Canon 5D Mark II

I simply cannot imagine what it was like now with my old 5D.  The two features most useful were the high ISO capabilities – allowing me to photograph in dark caves and churches – and the video functionality.  I took several videos while there that I know will be family classics.

Canon 70-200 F4 IS and 16-35 2.8 II

These are the main lenses I use for traveling and again they did not disappoint.  I find that I need to go either very wide or need a medium telephoto.  The IS of the 70-200 worked splendidly in museums, while the 2.8 aperture of the 16-35 worked wonders in dark caves and churches.

Nexto DI backup HD

I borrowed a 120GB unit from a friend and it turned out to be a very wise decision as my Digimate III died on the trip.  I was a bit nervous, but this device read the cards quickly and worked like a champ.  Without it, I would have been limited to the capacities of my flash cards.

What went just OK

ThinkTankPhoto Airport Accelerator v2.0 bag

I cannot trash this bag as it did fit easily into the overhead and IMHO is the best solution for transporting the maximum amount of equipment in the overhead.  On our return flight, a Lufthansa representative almost did not let me take it because it weighed more than the allowed 8kg.

What really bugs me about this bag though is it is a very poor bag for the field.  Its lack of pockets meant that I had to dig through the two pockets provided when I needed something.  I rarely carried it in the field, but did take it on longer day trips.  Some time in the future I will probably buy a different bag for use around Seattle and at times abroad.

Gitzo GM5561T monopod

I wound up finding my monopod useful only once – during an air balloon ride in Cappadocia.  Although it was extremely useful there, otherwise I did not use it at all.  I did try using it with my 100-400 on a boat, but the rocking of the boat caused all of my shots to be slanted.  I obtained better results hand held.  Also, the foot fell off the monopod and was lost, though I understand it is easy to replace.

What did not go well

Canon 180mm macro and macro flash

I took exactly three shots with my 180mm macro on the trip and did not use my MT-24EX at all.  I did see a lot of interesting insects, but there were simply too many other things to photograph.  For future trips similar to this, I will leave all of my macro equipment at home.

Pocketwizards

I played with them once but otherwise I didn’t need to bring them on this vacation.  On future vacations, they will stay home.

Digimate III

I always try to bring two backup hard drives, and it turned out to be a very wise decision on this trip.  My Digimate III died on the trip (wouldn’t stay on for more than a few minutes – even when fully charged) which would have been a disaster had I not borrowed a friend’s unit.

Turkish GPS

Though the GPS was in English, it drove us in circles for an hour and a half until we put it out of its misery and just used a map.  I’m not sure what was wrong with it, but it clearly had no idea how to handle round abouts and sent us in the opposite direction from where we needed to go, but once we started using the maps it agreed with our course.

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