Istanbul

Last year was not my most productive year as a photographer. I still took over 20000 images but it’s half what I did in 2014. And it’s not because I have not traveled abroad (I went to Ethiopia, Japan, France and Turkey) but I did not go out locally as much as I usually do. My day job kept me busy and I did not have much spare time. Even this blog is suffering from my lack of free time. Finally at the end of February, I was able to compile my best images for 2015. Better late than never is one my motto in life. Interestingly enough, there is a theme that is emerging from my images, I love cityscape (my top 4 images are Tokyo, San Francisco, Nice and San Francisco again). I love man-made structures, you have to go to my volcano image to find a purely...

On my way to Europe, the cheapest flight was transiting thru Istanbul. Yes, I know it’s a 2-hour slight detour when your final destination is Nice, France. But Turkish Airlines had great price and a free 7-day layover. I have always dreamed of Istanbul, the first European city (or the first Asian city depending on how you look at it). It’s the cradle of the European civilization, it used to be a Christian city and now it’s a Muslim one. We could only stay four days, so we picked an AirBnb in Sultanahmet’s neighborhood and we walked everywhere. Our first stop was the basilica cistern (Turkish: Yerebatan Sarayı). It is the only underground cistern that lie beneath the city of Istanbul (that is formerly Constantinople), Turkey. We went...