Photography and Writing by A. Cemal Ekin
A. Cemal Ekin
Photos and graphos, light and writing from Greek gave us the word we use every day. Millions of times. Over time, the core idea, photos, seems to have taken the back seat to the other one, graphos as we are more concerned with the “writing” part of the pair. Or, capturing, processing, editing, sharpening, … …
Another Way to Save the Highlights Lightroom has many adjustments and in general, they work reasonably well. I bet the most widely used sliders are the Highlights and the Shadows sliders. There seems to be a general tendency to make sure that the highlights are not blown and the shadows are not blocked. I would …
Not frequently but when the weather is nice I continue to take my short walks and continue photographing the neighborhood. The last two times I even put my mask on. Due to the shortage of masks, we don’t throw them away. I spray the inside and the outside with alcohol to sanitize them, mine and …
I wrote about my ongoing scanning of old photographs and some basic strategies in case you were considering a similar project. This post will address one specific issue, color cast removal using Photoshop. I will provide some examples to show you that it can work for a wide range of images. The color cast removal …
Just as I was thinking of a new subject to write about, an e-mail alert arrived from Sotheby’s about their upcoming auction. It will close tomorrow, April 3, but you can view the photographs in the auction. And what a collection it is! You will see works from the well-known masters like Walker Evans, Irving …
I am not a birder. I don’t chase the snowy owls to photograph. Those who know me well know that I jokingly refer to all the birds as a finch variety, like long-necked swimming finch, that purple long-legged finch, and so on. It is not that I do not appreciate the beauty and majesty of …
In the past, I wrote about photo auctions and mentioned a few by Sotheby’s. I enjoy them because I get a chance to see many photographs I couldn’t see otherwise. And, most of them present a different set of works by a diverse group of photographers. About a couple of years ago, I stumbled on …
In the last article, I offered a few technology tools that you can try at least to pass time. I also hoped that some may indeed be useful in your daily work. Today, I am going to add a few more. Keep in Touch Many years ago, I subscribed to a video phone service called …
Life in the Days of Corona We have been home for quite a while now with the exception of going to the local CVS to pick up our prescriptions. Jan continues to take Karma for walks several times a day if the weather permits. But in any case, they walk at least two or three …
Social distancing has become a new way of life, yet many don’t seem to observe the simple rule. That may be due to the insufficient explanation of the reason for social distancing and staying home. The reason is simple, the rule is not mainly to protect each of us from catching the virus, hope nobody …
Yesterday, we heard the passing of our dear friend Oya. We visited her last October when we were in Istanbul and even then she was suffering to some extent. She was a linguist, a teacher, a friend, especially a close one to my late sister Binnaz. We will miss her but will find comfort in …
Jan has been taking photographs for quite a while now. Although she photographs a variety of subjects she has found her voice in abstract photography. She is more interested in the colors, texture, lines, and shapes than the object she photographs. Some of her work may be minimalist rather than abstract but those she took …
I have scanned many slides, negatives, prints over the years. Since late December 2019, I have been doing it as a project to convert old photographs to digital and, in some ways, relive the memories. The end result, I hope will be an archive of family members, gatherings, events as well as many photographs I …
They say if you have good eyes, your vision is 20/20. That is, you can see clearly at 20 feet what a person with normal visual acuity sees at 20 feet (6 meters for the metric minded.) This concept of good sight even gave us sayings like “hindsight is 20/20” meaning we may not know …
Although this time we stayed in Ayvalik for only four days, we managed to do and see quite a bit. Ayvalik is colorful and charming that invites exploration. We also met new people and saw new places. In this final post of the ongoing travelog, I will try to give you a feel for the …
When we visited the olive grove for the second time in the morning, we went to Ma’Adra Vineyards on the hills of Madra mountains for lunch. The road was winding and rough, the weather a bit foggy, but traveling as a two-car convoy we made it to the vineyards high up on the mountains. The …
A couple of years ago, Binnaz and Ergun purchased an olive grove as a future revenue source for the ASKEV foundation. The grove has about 1,000 olive trees, mostly old with a few newer ones. Since the purchase, they have done additional work to make the grove conform to high-quality agriculture standards with automated irrigation …
After the first two weeks in Turkey and seeing the family and friends, Elif and Mina arrived at the beginning of our third week. We spent the first night in Istanbul and the next day Mustafa drove us to Ayvalik as the girls wanted. The new roads and the bridge crossing the Izmit Bay cut …
I am probably beating a dead horse by writing about the very strange change in Istanbul’s architectural character. I wrote before about the discomfort of Istanbul and I experienced the same when we visited there in October 2019. In my previous visits and related posts, I called Istanbul with a nickname I coined for it: …
Continued from part 1, the is the end of our second week in Istanbul. Elif and Mina arrived on October 14 and we all went to Ayvalik on October 15 to return to Istanbul on the 19th. October 11, 2019 As planned, I dropped Jan off at Mehmet and Isin’s house where the girls would …
The main reason that brought us to Turkey this year was to see our family and friends. As we get older, our shrinking circle becomes more important, and that brought us there. Travel, especially air travel is getting harder, at least for me, but people we wanted to see made it somewhat bearable. As we …
The Last Byzantine Palace Many years ago, probably around 1980, we visited the remains of the last Byzantine palace. The Palace of Porphyrogenitus, called Tekfur Sarayi in Turkish has a history of over a thousand years. When we visited in the early 1980s it had one facade wall flanked by two side walls creating a …
After a busy and somewhat eventful summer, Jan and I arrived in Istanbul on October 1 for a three-week stay. The flight from Boston to Istanbul was about 9 hours and we arrived at the brand new Istanbul Airport on time around 4 PM local time. The airport indeed appeared very large and for some …
Photographs can have highly evocative qualities. When successful, they create an emotional response in the viewer. Often times, this may be mixed with liking or disliking the work but with a little extra nudge, we can probably enter the evocative domain and explore the underlying feelings. My previous post included 30+ photographs which I hoped …
