Istanbul Mosques

You remember my trip to Istanbul? Well it's hardly surprising that I'm still working my way through the edits with the amount of photos taken. Tonight we have a selection of mosques that are in the city - all of these photos are take on the European side of the waters.

This mosque, the Blue Mosque, had a fabulous wall of decorative tiles. This image is a photo of one of the old washing wells.

This mosque hung the Turkish flag across the street, joining to the building over the road.

The detail over this doorway was very pretty, yet doesn't come across overly well on the image. I do though, like the shape of the shadows created.

All mosques have towers like this one, usually at least two. Men used to climb up, stand on the balconies and sing from them at the time of a call for prayer. Nowadays microphones/megaphones are used.

This photograph looks through an internal courtyard of a mosque, just as prayers are starting.

This mosque I found most fascinating, originally built as a mosque, it then became a Christian Church before being abandoned. It has now been restored back to a mosque.

I have a video on my phone of an evening prayer call, when I figure out how to upload from my phone I will. 

Oooh, Two Posts In A Day...

Yeah, I know I posted earlier but I popped down to the post room today and got two letters and a parcel. Two of which were from two of my favourite non-related people ever back home in Davenham. I decided to share an image of them in this case, before I write back to them.

Ray King. 

I got to know this man through working in the newsagents back home (a brilliant place to work). He helped me out a lot and we always had a good chat on a saturday morning when he came in for his paper. In fact, he helped me out with the project I've photographed below and helped to get me in to the courthouse in the town to do a project. 

I got a parcel from him today with two books in, one from WWII times (a big passion of mine I discovered when doing a portrait project based on WWII children) and the other from the 60's based on towns still recovering from the effects of WWII. I now have to hurry and finish my other book so I can start these.  

Jim Conboy.

He's been my next door neighbour for my whole life, a whopping 18 years. He used to help me with my maths when I was little, we did sums over the hedge using door numbers and registration plates on cars. There are still numbers in blue chalk on the side of both houses. I used to go to Bingo with Jim and the old ladies, both of us were callers at the legion.

This photo of him was part of my WWII project, he was one of my "children" so to speak. I loved this project and Jim was an amazing person to photograph and ask about as his Dad used to drive the POWs between camps and often took them home with him if it was tea time in the middle of the shift (if there was only one or two) and his Mum would cook for them as well. Amazing ey?

I got a little letter from him today, with RBL stickers celebratiing 90 years. I'm going to write back to him tomorrow in my break between lessons. 

I'm looking forward to going home in the middle of November, it will be nice to have a quick catch up with everybody. I wrote to my Gran as well yesterday, sent her some photos of both me and a bit of my work so she can see what I'm up to. It wasn't till I got here I realised how so many people have helped me to do so many things!

Apologies for the sentimental post, feeling a bit emotional tonight.

Bedroom View

My view out of my window isn't dreadful but it could be a lot better. I think it's made worse by the spikes that are on all the windowsills to stop pigeons landing there. They aren't pretty. Although I much prefer them to pigeons (I hate pigeons). I just can't get used to looking out the window and seeing big metal spikes. 

This photo doesn't really show them to the full extent but it does a good enough job. 

On another note, I went to the archives at the university today looking for some books on the history of Cheltenham, or Gloucestershire as a whole. It could be a place I spend a lot of time.