There really isn't much of a story to this set of photos, however I'll tell it anyway. My friend Garth and I went to visit another very close friend named Tyler who is currently living in Istanbul. We went to visit him for 8 days. We had a great time seeing all the sights that Istanbul, the Bosphorus Straight and the Black Sea had to offer. The whole time we were there I kept mentioning how I really wanted to go see a traditional Whirling Dervish Sema (Worship). Tyler interestingly enough had been living in Turkey for about a year and hadn't attended a performance yet so we decided to go. These photos were taken from this performance, which unfortunately was done as a tourist attraction and not an actual religious ceremony, but I don't think the Dervish religious worship is open to the public, so this is as good as it gets when you're an outsider. In any case, it was quite a performace (the men were all dripping with sweat after the close to 40 minutes of whirling) with very impressive lighting and conveinent black background. I tried a few different exposure settings, and unfortunately some of the photos are a little dark, but keep in mind I was hand holding the camera and none of this was done with a tripod! I think they came out pretty well for some on the fly shooting!
