Day 10 – Gonen and Isparta
Day 10 – Thursday – July 21, 2011
As days quickly pass and I would be leaving the area soon Bilge wanted me back in Isparta to photograph all of the non-inscription sculptures in the garden at the museum. She sent her student Emre with us to show us which ones but said if we had time to get as many as we could.
I was a little wary about the lighting and what I think is a good shot vs. what they need to show the detail they want. So I sent my camera to shoot 5 pictures of each photo (2 overexposed and 2 underexposed) with the hope that one of the 5 might do it. I was again not going to use a tripod (it was sunny) so there might be slight variance and they wouldn’t be ideal to combine as HDR (high dynamic range).
Its very hard work. All the shots need to be straight on and the only way to be steady is to take a knee. After an house my hip was killing me! Bert was brought along to hold the scale but then I was told we didn’t need it so he just was moral support. We did the ones we were told to in lighting time so we just started to systematically go through the entire front and back garden.
We did take a break as I tried to do a VR object and a VR panorama. The panorama is gorgeous the object will take time to put together and won’t be done in Turkey.
In all I shot over 800 photos at the museum and Emre told me to stop (even though we didn’t do all the sculptures we did more than enough). Emre walked with me to get a snack (which he wouldn’t let me pay for!) The local lunch place was closed to we stopped and got what I thought were candy coated peanuts but instead were salt coated (I mean SALT) an then we waited for the car and just relaxed in the garden on benches using a column capital as a coffee table (which is common and very strange at first). Emre is a very nice guy – he tries hard with his English and while I try not to correct anyone when he asked “Are you boring?” I told him he meant “Are you bored?” And communicated the subtle difference – I think he too thought it was funny. No cracks from the peanut gallery if you are reading this far and you think I am boring then whose fault is that?
Lunch was your standard rice and beans and tomato soup (I do love it when the have chickpeas ) but most everyone was up on the mountain with the Germans. Bert and I just stayed in the room working on data and reading our books.
We started to hear the sound of people being back and when we went and explore we found EVERYONE in the German students bedroom/lab hunched over the computer looking at the scans they took that day. If you remember at the beginning of Jurassic Park when they are all gathered around the ground penetrating radar waiting for the images to materialize – it was something like that. They were glued! One of the German students, Arie, walked everyone through the process and you could tell Bilge was very excited. They then showed us some examples of work they had completed in Syria and the ramifications of how you could post process afterwards. I like these guys!
Pervin came back and told me that after dinner she wanted to run up into the hills and look at the new apartments/public housing projects. We were losing the light but she insisted that we eat first. I noticed the German’s weren’t heading to dinner and instead were having a few beers by themselves. When I told them it was dinner time they said they were heading into Gonen to have some Lamb Shish. I was so jealous – I have never skipped dinner with the group to have meat in town. They said I was welcome to join them and I told them I had to go with Pervin but to keep an eye out for me.
Dinner was peppers stuffed with rice – and while I know some of you would love this – it really isn’t what I eat at all. There was some dessert though – this crispy fried pastry covered in honey called – Tulumba which I did eat. I told Pervin we should not miss the light and she grabbed her student Gokce (since Gunsu has left) and we headed up the hillside.
It was strange because we rarely drive this direction in Gonen and as we passed the cemetery I realized that we never filmed or walked around it. We headed up and saw some really nice apartments. Pervin was amazed that I said they were very nice and asked if I wanted live in something like it. I told her no but that compared to the other houses we had seen this was very nice and modern (and isolated).
Gokce had to stop for batteries and there was a very modern looking 3 store shopping strip up the hill and while she shopped we drove by the upper Mosque. Pervin remarked, as she saw the building and the sunset, that it was a very pretty picture of a not-so-pretty building. The mosque was almost industrial and looked as fabricated as the houses.
As we headed back I told Pervin to drop me off in town so I could meet the German students. She wanted to know where and I said just drop me anywhere as I had no idea where they were going. She seemed very concerned until I reminded her that the entire downtown area was a 3 x 3 square block and that they wouldn’t be hard to find.
So I was wrong about that. I kept looking and I couldn’t find them. Its not that big a town but still. I did see a film crew with light and monitors and such filming something – it looks like a commercial but I have no idea what they would need to film in a small cafe in Gonen.
As I walked along I heard some laughter and some German and found them. They had already ordered and when I asked for a menu they remarked that there wasn’t one and to just order the Shish. It was oh so yummy good, lamb, bread, Fanta, good company (they all spoke English very well). 4 of us and the total was 28TL!
I stayed up talking with the three German students (Arie, Hajo, and Hanna) rather late and I felt bad because they had to go back up the mountain again the the morning – they are only onsite for 10 days and want to get as many data points as possible. They laser scan from a point and then relocate the machine to keep building a better and better model.
In the morning I am schedule to return to the local bazaar!
Images from Day 10 (also read the captions!)
(click here if you don’t see the image thumbnails)
