TURKEY by NewmanServices.com
FOCUS : SINAN MOSQUES IN ISTANBUL
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About

PHOTOGRAPHY
DEVELOPMENT
TOUR
Photography and website by:
Chuck Newman
NEWMAN Services Corp.
26 Forest Way
Essex Fells, NJ 07021
973-228-5753
chuck@newmanservices.com
newmanservices.com
Database web application development using Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP)

I am completely an amateur photographer. But I'm pretty good at writing websites and I love Islamic architecture. I find Islamic architecture and decorative arts particularly interesting both for its use of patterns and the way it incorporates art from other cultures. Sinans's use of Hagia Sophia as an archetype is a prime example. For that reason, I have wanted to see Istanbul for a decade. While preparing for the trip, I found shots of only a few of Sinan's mosques. I wanted to do something about that and I'm about half way to satisfaction.



SEE MORE SHOTS OF OGUZ
Our Tour Guide
Oguz Kosebalaban was our tour guide. (Pronounced Owes; the G is silent.) He's quite happy in this shot because he has taken us to a friend's restaurant to show us his bird and his mother's dish. This was one of my favorite stops. Oguz is very professional. He's accustomed to having much larger groups of older folks. But he did loosen up for our smaller, younger group. His own site moves sometimes. So try this or Google or try your luck. Despite the occasional grammatical errors in his site, his English is perfectly understandable. You can e-mail him at oguzbalaban@hotmail.com.


PHOTOGRAPHY TOP   NEXT
I knew I wanted to make this site before I went on the trip. And I know that mosques have little light. My compact film camera just wasn't up to the task. I needed a nice lens. Digital cameras have their problems too. A nice one would cost me a grand easily. Even then, they can't compete with 800 speed film. And then there's the memory. I selected 300 shots for this site. That would take up about $300 worth of flash memory. And after all that, I still don't have any prints or CDs. I have to do that myself. For film, I found a few nice SLRs with lots of glass and plenty of features. The Canon Rebel is a top choice for 4 or $500. Olympus has a fine alternative for $300. For an extra $7 a roll, Kodak puts the shots on CD for me. They say CDs last 100 years. I hope that's true but how do they now? Besides, what's the chance a CD drive will still exist then?

NOTE: All but ten shots are mine. I own them and reserve all rights. If you want any, you have to ask me and I have to agree. I can give you copies with far more detail and without a water mark or digital signature. But if I catch you with one of my shots, I WILL prosecute you.

DEVELOPMENT TOP   NEXT
I'm sure you didn't notice, but you can only see 6 pages in the site. It looks like a lot more becase the server customises these pages just for you. It can do this by accessing a database of images. If I want to make changes to this site, I don't have to write more pages and upload them. I can just change records in the database from any browser.

Some people prefer graphic HTML editors. But I still hand code all my HTML. It gives me a lot of control.

There are hundreds of photos in the database. And that's just a fraction of what I took. Each photo has a large version and a thumbnail size version. The large versions are about 1/4 the size of the original 1.5 megapizel images. Some of the images have been touched up by brightening them or rotating them. Others have been spliced together from two images. You might have noticed that some images have a line through the middle of them. I use Paint Shop Pro for photo editing. I also use PhotoImpact to cut and make image maps from some images.

If you are interested in a site like this, please do give me a call at 973-228-5753 (USA)

TOUR TOP

We chose ISRAM (isram.com) mostly for convenience. They spent the most time in Istanbul and part of our group could go home a few days earlier. However, they are also well recommended. Besides, they have a nice site. Only 5 of us were on the trip and 4 of them were with me. The 5th turned out to live near us. Roomer has it that we were the overflow from 2 large busloads. For most of us, the tour lasted 13 nights plue 1 night flying. I'd say a good 4 days was spent in Istanbul.




Comments on This Page
Webmaster says ...1/18/2002 Google Optimization: Now that the site’s been up for 4 months (since Oct 2001), let’s see how I am listed in Google. Although I am good at optimizing for Google, I haven’t done any of that yet. The only thing I’ve done is get it listed in the Open Directory Project (dmoz.org), which goes a long way. From my logs, I can see that Google is really the only site bringing in visitors. I get a lot of hits from searches for Mosques and Sinan. I am ranked 19 for Sinan and 29 for Mosques. Put them together and I’m #1. Not bad but I could do much better. I get very poor results for Mosque (singular), Cami, and Photo(s). That’s because Google could care less about Meta Keywords and Description. So instead, I will hide them in the body.

Sinan mosque 2
Turkey mosques 3
Istanbul mosques 5
Istanbul mosque 10
Mosques photos 26
Turkey mosque ? (Oguz got 21)
Mosque photos ?
Mosque photo ?
Mosque ?

Webmaster says ...2/27/2002 6 weeks later and I've improved things a bit. A few things got worse too.

Sinan 22 (down 3)
Mosques 24 (up 5)
Sinan Mosques 1
Sinan mosque 1 (up 1)
Turkey mosques 4 (down 1)
Istanbul mosques 11 (down 6)
Istanbul mosque 11 (down 1)
Mosques photos 5 (up 21)
Turkey photos 4 (new)
Istanbul photos 17 (new)
Mosque photos 26 (new)
Turkey mosque ?
Mosque photo ?
Mosque ?

Webmaster says ...3/19/2003 over a year later - mixed results

Sinan 10 (up 12)
Mosques 26 (down 2)
Sinan Mosques 1
Sinan mosque 1
Turkey mosques 3 (up 1)
Istanbul mosques 18 (down 7)
Istanbul mosque 11
Mosques photos 5
Mosque photos 26
Turkey photos 16 (down 12)
Turkey mosque 3 (new)
Webmaster says ...2/10/2004 Another year has passed. Google changed the way it indexes recently.

Sinan 9 (up 1)
Mosques 29 (down 3)
Sinan Mosques 1
Sinan mosque 1
Turkey mosques 5 (down 2)
Istanbul mosques 19 (down 1)
Istanbul mosque 30+ (way down!)
Mosques photos 7 (down 2)
Mosque photos 7 (way up)
Turkey photos 22 (down 6)
Turkey mosque 3
Visitor 240 says ...
3/27/2006 Hello there,

I would like to offer an exchange of links between your website and ours, which have excellent Google rankings.
If you find such a proposal interesting then please send me details of your sites.
However, if you are not interested please accept my apologies for taking your time.

Attention! We can write an article for you to place there. We'll write this article specially for you to fit in the theme of your website, and in exchange we ask only for attribution in the form of a link from the article to our site or sites as the authors. If you'd like more information, just reply to this mail.

Best regards,
Lidia Sadlowski

sadlowski_lidia@o2.pl
Visitor 745 says ...
3/18/2007 {links:20
Visitor 184 says ...
4/11/2007
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Language: turkishclass



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