Planar. Ektar. Fotograflar. Istanbul… In 5 Frames

Cue the Sertab Erener song.

How do you tell a story about a city bigger than many countries, in just 5 images? This was the question I was grappling with when trying to write this article, while going over my reels of photos from this summer’s trip to Istanbul.

Istanbul is a city that is dear to my heart, not least because it’s the hometown of my better half. It is a city of colors and contrasts, of sounds and scents, of motion and life, exhausting, but beautiful. You could spend a month, and never run out of something new to see. So, when I planned my visit there to see family & friends, I was very much looking forward to burning through some rolls of film!

However, I wanted to challenge myself on this trip. Constraint is the mother of creativity in my eyes, and I prefer to travel light. To force my creative muscles to work, I set myself the condition of 1 camera, 1 lens, and 1 film type for this trip, on top of making a 5 Frames article out of everything. What I went with was:

1. Camera: Contax 167MT. As much as I love my old Voskhod, there was no way it’d survive the flight. The Contax feels really comfortable and nice in the hand, has great features, and mostly importantly, is very light for a fully metal automatic SLR, weighing around the same as a Leica M7. Of course, being able to use Zeiss glass is a critical factor too!
2. Lens: Zeiss 50/1.4 Planar. I really enjoy using 45/50 mm lenses, I do the majority of my shooting at this focal length. I find it very flexible in almost every situation and natural to compose with. This ever-reliable Planar is also very compact and lightweight, the camera remains balanced with it attached, so it is easy to walk around with it for hours.
3. Film: Kodak Ektar 100. This was easy because I already had a few rolls in my fridge! But joking aside, I really like the saturated colors and smooth images it gives, so it felt perfect for a city full of color like Istanbul. It’s also a very bright, sunny, city, so a slower film made sense.

One final rule I made for myself, referring a bit back to Eggleston – no obvious subjects for this article! Everyone has seen a shot of the Haiga Sofia and Blue Mosque, and of the many cats that roam the streets, but while those are all important and nice to see, they aren’t Istanbul. I want to capture the human experience, not the scenery and landmarks.

Each of the following frames are intended to be chapters, of the giant story that is Istanbul, as it truly is according to my eyes. Hopefully, it will also convincingly show how capable a 50mm lens is. I’ll start with the featured image.

To me, this the pulse of Istanbul in a single image. An endless sea of people flowing about, the bustle of vehicles and birds, and buildings of various styles and vintages stacked above each other.

I really like how this landscape plays to the strengths of the lens. Going for a wide-angle would’ve captured too much, while going tele would’ve cut out the feeling of flow, I feel. And the resolution of both the lens and film captures a lot of detail, even the tourists on top of Galata Tower in the distance.

A calmer change of pace, this was a really interesting exhibit of art & calligraphy, inspired by Islamic art styles and featuring various subjects, held by an important mosque in the Uskudar district. These were all made by local artists, mostly women, and were offered for private sale. My fiancée and I ended up getting a painting of a local landmark, Maiden Tower, for our home, as a memory from this trip.

The Ektar really shined here for me, I love how rich all of the colors in this scene are, from the artwork to the velvet drapes. I was forced to open my lens up more on this shot; thankfully, there was still enough depth of field to keep the shot in focus. I haven’t found going wider than f/2.8 to be particularly useful for my shots, but stopping down a fast lens is generally sharper than opening up a slower lens, so I find it beneficial to have the capability anyways.

Istanbul’s story is intertwined with the sea. History, art, to even the fish market of Besiktas and the screeching of seagulls above, life here is shared with the waters of the Bosphorus. These wonderful ferries can be found across the city as a form of public transit, taking you almost anywhere along Istanbul’s waterfront in a matter of minutes, and forming a part of thousands of peoples’ daily commutes. I highly recommend using them to get around, and getting into the spirit of the city.

This particular ferry is named “Martyr Mustafa Aydogdu”, after a man who was murdered in a terrorist attack 20 years ago. Many ferries, as well as streets and placenames, similarly commemorate people murdered in terrorist attacks and military coups. Unfortunately, the history and geopolitics of Istanbul, and Turkey as a whole, also contains sorrow, and these are reminders of how stability and peace, can never be taken for granted.

This shot was more or less an impulse shot, one I took while simply walking down the shoreline. I had set my lens to zone focus and when I saw the ferry pull in, I immediately snapped. To me, this demonstrates the great advantage of a 50 mm normal lens – composing feels natural as it is similar to normal human vision, and the depth of field at f/8 is very wide.

“How happy is the one who says they are a Turk!” Ataturk says on his monument on the left, flanking an arch commemorating the 101st anniversary of the Turkish Republic, while traces of the Roman and Ottoman past rise in the distance. This is the story of a city where the ancient past and modern present merge together, sometimes smoothly, sometimes less so. As Istanbul heads towards the future, where will it go?

I have to admit here, my fiancée’s deserves the credit for this frame. Her sharp eyes spotted the story here, while we were reviewing my shots. The way she explained it as a native of the city, opened my own eyes, so I wanted to share it. Capturing this photo took some creativity. In order to get the right framing, I had to stand on top of a barrier pole! The shot was well worth it though.

Earlier, I mentioned Istanbul as exhausting. The bustle, the crowdedness, the cost, everything, is taxing on the mind. And sometimes, even in the biggest cities, you can feel the loneliest. Sometimes, all you want, is just a break to sit down. This man had just brought some groceries, and now was waiting for someone to take him back home; hopefully, the rest of his day was uneventful.

Ektar gets a bit of a bad reputation online, from what I’ve seen, from how it renders people. In my experience, highlights take on some reddish/magenta tones, as Ektar is a warm film, and that’s what seems to cause ruddy skin tones. Admittedly, I’m not much of a portraiture person, but I find these tones correctable in post, like here, so it doesn’t bother me.

Ultimately, I found this challenge really rewarding. This setup I felt worked perfectly for my style of shooting. Lugging around the Contax was easy, I burned through my rolls very quickly, and most importantly, made plenty of memories with family & friends there. It made me experiment more, I was able to get some great images, and by thinking about the story I wanted to tell, it also made me reassess how I tell a story in my photography as a whole.

With these 5 frames, I hope that this journey was as enjoyable to you as it was to me! You can find these images in full resolution, along with other shots from this trip, on my Flickr album here.

Last but not least, a very deep and special thanks to my amazing fiancée, for encouraging me to create & explore, for reviewing my reels and ideas with me, and for always supporting my photography.

And of course, special thanks to Hamish and the 35mmc team for allowing me to share my mind with the world, and for maintaining this platform for us all.

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