Inside Hagia Sophia – Istanbul (Turkey)

 Photo of the Day  3 Responses »
Jul 242012
 
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Always, putting human elements in a photo creates this mysterious artistic look. Ofcourse one need to know when and where that element would work the best. In this photo for example, I knew shooting the hallway wont create so much drama, after all its just a hallway inside the famous HAGIA SOPHIA in Istanbul (Hagia Sophia is a former Orthodox patriarchal basilica, later a mosque, and now a museum in Istanbul, Turkey.) . So I decided to use my wife to give the photo a more kick. So I asked her to move away from me and for her just to walk normally away. And I took snap. For this one, I needed a higher shutter speed to freeze the subject and at the same time it was indoor i needed a high ISO to get that high shutter. Thus I had to reduce my aperture to the lowest the lens can handle. In this case it was 2.8 as I had to use the ZEISS lens (21mm) to get as much wide inside the frame as possible

Hope you like it

 

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Inside the Grand Mosque – Muscat – Oman

 PhotoWalk  No Responses »
Aug 082011
 
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Tell you what, this time less words and more photos. Let the photo speaks for itself. For those who are not aware, this photowalk took place at the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat. I did alot of photowalk at this mosque, but this time I focused on the inside and more in the story telling of the area rather the architectural side of it. So enjoy the photo.

All the photos were taken using the Leica M-9 with the 35mm Summicron at Aperture of 2 and ISO of 400

 

 

In 1992 Sultan Qaboos directed that his country of Oman should have a Grand Mosque. A competition for its design took place in 1993 and after a site was chosen at Bausher construction commenced in 1995. Building work, which was undertaken by Carillion Alawi LLC took six years and four months.

The Mosque is built from 300,000 tonnes of Indian sandstone. The main musalla (prayer hall) is square (external dimensions 74.4 x 74.4 metres) with a central dome rising to a height of fifty metres above the floor. The dome and the main minaret (90 metres) and four flanking minarets (45.5 metres) are the mosque’s chief visual features. The main musalla can hold over 6,500 worshippers, while the women’s musalla can accommodate 750 worshipers. The outer paved ground can hold 8,000 worshipers and there is additional space available in the interior courtyard and the passageways, making a total capacity of up to 20,000 worshipers.

PS/ Please let me know which of the photos are your favorite. Thanks