Photo Journal
You found my photo journal! Here I intend to share some pictures I take as I retake photography as a hobby. I took a photography course when I was in middle school, but life happened, and I, for some reason, did not take a camera in my hands for my own enjoyment until I started attending this course on photography (see the first day). I did some casual smartphone photography in the meantime, and I did enjoy it, but now I feel like I need to take this hobby a bit more seriously and invest some more time.
Below you can see the Flickr albums for each posted day, and you can click here to see a collection of my other Flickr albums formed with a more aesthetic motivation rather than chronological. If at any point you go “Hey, that’s me/mine, but I don’t want (it) to be there!” you can just tell me, and I’ll remove the photo. It should also go without saying that if you want to use a photograph I took for any reason, please do not do so without my consent.
19-22.04.2023: Izmir Trip
This was my going back to digital photography again, with my beloved Fujifilm XT30. However, the black-and-white analogue photography I did still rubbed on me, and now I quite like it. It almost feels like cheating, as if simply turning a photograph to grayscale improves it. I also realized that I really liked the 16:9 aspect ratio, especially when shooting landscape. The portraits are way more challenging as the elongated aspect ratio lets too much in. But still, I think I’ll stick to it, for a while, at least.
Roll #3 & #4: The high-life
I used both of these rolls quite liberally as if the supply was infinite, the economy was well, and the analogue films were cheap and widely available. I guess I shot as if I was living my ideal photography life. All of these are again shot with the Nikon One Touch 100 compact camera, with films of varying ISOs.
Roll #2 An introduction to compact film cameras
I shot these with a film of 100 ISO and the camera my grandma gave me, a Nikon One Touch 100. I deliberately used it to try out the camera and so I didn’t get many pictures I can show, but I liked these for some reason. The rest of the 37 shots in total are either personal, or not good, or not in focus, or over/under exposed, etc.
11.02.2023 Day out
I really needed to go out this day, after looking at the tragedies that go on after the earthquake in Kahramanmaraş, Turkey. I went out to meet with a couple of friends, and took some shots while out. I’m very keen on starting street photography although I’m quite shy on taking pictures of people I don’t know, but this night has been quite encouraging.
03-05.02.2023 Eskişehir Trip
It had been a long time since I last shot (apart from the sporadic analog shoots with the compact camera I carry), so I wanted to take my camera with me to this little weekend trip I went on with my mom. I can’t say I took many great pictures, not many I’m satisfied with, but at least I did take pictures, and I’m glad I did.
29.09-01.10.2022 ABF Ankara Shodan Seminar
Roll #1 An introduction to film photography
03.03.2022 A challenge.
My friend Oğuzhan (in both pictures) from aikido has asked me to take a couple of pictures of him as a silhouette, both as an aikido memory and also I believe for a project. I got interested because this was one of the first times I got to make the photo I am taking, instead of finding it wild in the world, so to speak. We combined 4 cellphone/tablet flashes to create a tiny light source of our own behind Oğuzhan, as we took the picture after practice in the evening. A mistake on my end was to put all of the flashes in one spot: I suspect having them spread around behind could have produced a more visible shadow. This was also one of the first times I tried operating a camera I didn’t really know (Canon EOS 600D), and it was frustrating figuring out where everything is. (Why does it only have a single dial? I kept searching for a second one!)
20.02.2022 Not really an entry.
This is not a real entry as in I am not showcasing some photos I took, but a camera I took from my father. So far I have been using my father’s Nikon D200 but hopefully in a few months, I will have my own (digital) camera. Until then, instead of continuing with the D200, I decided to try some analog photography to learn putting some more thought into the photos before I capture (I took the one on the right in more than 10 tries, for example) and balance the trade-off of not freezing with anxiety with my finger at the shutter not taking any pictures. Also, maybe I will develop the whole romanticism or a deeper appreciation for analog photography in the meantime.
08.01.2022 A late new year’s eve.
As the whole dojo we had planned a new year’s party but it had to be cancelled due to multiple people getting the COVID (one of which was me), so we postponed it to January, and these are from that night. That night was my first one out after my lovely COVID quarantine, which also wonderfully covered the new year’s eve as well. I was quite trigger happy, and took lots and lots of pictures, which I love. They are not here, however, because I had to make a distinction between pictures I love because I associate them with good memories and good people, and pictures I love because they are “objectively” good (whatever that means). The ones here are again somewhat (but not quite) in line with my minimal-but-strategic lighting goal, especially Borrowed drinks 1, so I am quite content with them.
10.12.2021 Out after a long time.
This day was the birthday of Anisa, a close friend of mine, and I decided to take my camera with me in hopes of capturing a couple of shots. It had been quite a long time since I last went out to shoot (as also evident by the dates I suppose) so I was quite eager to do so, but I also didn’t want to sabotage Anisa’s birthday.
On the other hand, I feel like the two pictures of Elif I took this day are really good examples of the kind of photos I want to take: There is very little light, especially on the subject, and it happens to be shining in very strategic ways so that it is just enough to show the subject, and not much more. Elif is almost not even illuminated at all, the background is much more luminous, but the light on her is just enough to show her face and her expressions.
07.11.2021 The last week of the photography course, Sunday.
Today was the only day I could join an actual outdoor photo shoot with the course, and I think it shows. I took many pictures, and these are what I salvage among them. We did practice under a theme given by Serhat Hoca, our instructor, a couple of times (like working with reflections) and that was a lot of fun. There’s one thing Serhat Hoca said I will try to keep in mind in the future about working with reflections, and that’s to not treat a reflective surface like a fancy physical image filter.
06.11.2021 The last week of the photography course, Saturday.
We were supposed to go on a photo shoot today but we didn’t due to the cold weather and decided to make the next day’s shoot longer. These are just some random pictures I took that day, so there is not much to show.
30-31.10.2021 The third week of the photography course.
On Saturday I was keen on going to the book fair and taking pictures, but it was incredibly crowded and so I just decided to get out of there after 30 minutes of idly looking at the booking. And I actually would have taken more pictures Sunday, but near the end of the course I felt sick and had to go home and rest. Serhat Hoca was showing such cool stuff too I’m so pissed…
29.10.2021: Alone at the office.
I didn’t really have much to do today, so I chose to do nothing at the office (even though I came to the office with ambitions to do stuff). I had taken my camera with me to force myself to take pictures and hey, I did. I can’t help but think that the pictures I’m taking are ordinary and nothing but the ordinary, but I consider some of them to be photography exercises and some to hold some aesthetic because they’re ordinary, so they end up here.
23.10.2021: The second week of the photography course.
I only have the first picture from the actual course, though, and the rest are from when I met with my friends. I mostly played with the depth of field, by choice and by force: Because we met late, I had to keep my aperture wide open, so I didn’t have much depth. Taking pictures at night also meant that I also had to learn to steady my hand and crank up the ISO.
17.10.2021: The first week of the photography course.
All the pictures were for learning how (auto)focusing works, so not much to show today (other than the ones I took at home).
