This is the 1500 year old cistern in Istanbul, Turkey. It was built by the Byzantines as a water storage facility should the city come under siege. In the construction, they used stone carvings of Medusa, a priestess to the goddess Athena in Greek mythology. The head was taken from an ancient Greek temple in the area and placed upside down so the Christians at the time wouldn't worship it. It was here in this dimly lit cistern that I learned how to handle the 'no tripod' prohibition. I took this shot in 2006 with m first serious digital camera, the Canon 1Ds Mark II, and noise was a big problem. Images above 1000 were basically useless. I had to have complete depth of field here, but tripods weren't allowed. So, I took the ball head off the tripod and affixed it to the bottom of the camera. I placed the flat part of the ball head on the stone floor, and I laid down to compose and shoot (we didn't have articulating LCD screens then). The security guards watched me do this and didn't say a thing . . . because I wasn't using a tripod. This is an 8 second exposure at f/22. To insure I was able to take sharp pictures, I kept a downward pressure on the camera and ball head during the exposure. I used the built-in 2 second self-timer to eliminate vibration. The ISO was 400, and I used a 16mm wide angle lens.
0 Comments