While considering the matter of just what I want to get out of the Turkish Adventure, and especially out of the photographic part, I started thinking about which photographers I especially admire, and/or which I think of as particularly important influences. My immediate shortlist, without consulting any of the many books in the house, began with Henri Cartier Bresson, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, August Sander and Paul Caponigro. Trying to identify just what common thread is found in those 5 led to the (obvious) observation that they worked in monochrome –in black and white, as we used to say (though greys might deserve mention too). And of course my own photographic aesthetic developed in that medium.

Thinking further, I realized that I’ve never had an intuitive sense for light, and especially for light in color. That’s what I’d like to work on, and it occurred to me that I could shift one of my iPhone camera apps over to B&W, and also set the Coolpix in that mode, and use those resources to explore some of what I encounter in Turkey.
Now, obviously one can post-process digital color as B&W, and I may well resort to that with some images, but I find it much easier to see the play of light in B&W. So I did these two images at home yesterday morning, just as a place to begin:

The day began at the Park’n’Fly hotel in Revere with a 5AM trip to Logan Airport to catch the flight to JFK. The images aren’t distinguished, but I’ll post them anyhow: