35th birthday self-portrait in the WC at Reykjavik 871±2 in 2007.
Apologies to everyone whose blog I used to read but don’t anymore… I’ve had to forgo a lot of recreational reading while I attend to the business end of photography. Right now my goal is to maintain the sites I’m in charge of (there are few beyond my own four) and do whatever extracurricular reading I can manage on the iPod Touch in bed before crashing. Lately, I’ve found I last about 90 seconds.
Anyway, one of the things about juggling my schedule between The Firm and freelance photography assignments is that I have to plan the whole year far in advance, much sooner than I ever have before. Right now the weddings I’ve booked are thankfully scattered rather evenly through 2010, but January’s only half over — in all likelihood some of the future dates will fall closer together, that’s just the way it goes.
So I’m planning my birthday trip for this year, and I’ve narrowed my destinations to two: Turkey (Plan A) and Portugal (Plan B). It is unusual for me to divulge big travel plans, but I’m opening this up a bit while keeping the details vague. I’ve been wanting to visit Turkey for years, but often I end up in Europe simply because I met a lot of Europeans in my early travelling days and I like to combine exploring with rendez-vous with friends abroad. This year I’m telling people to meet me in Turkey, with a smaller chance I may end up in Portugal instead. I’ve booked a wedding to shoot right after my birthday, so I have to return by the 20th of June. I haven’t booked my flights yet or set my departure date.
Why Turkey? When I moved to Vancouver in 1996, I lived in a shared a house at the south end (Marpole) and one of the housemates was Turkish. Later he and I moved out into our own place as a couple and I learned a great deal about Turkish culture, history, and modern life from him and his friends. I was fascinated. He cooked Turkish food for me, explained the language, and was proud of his nationality. He had immigrated to Canada independently when he was 22, and I was very impressed with how quickly he integrated into Canadian society. We had plans to visit Turkey together, but I moved into my own place on Beach Avenue in 1998 and ended our relationship before the Turkey trip (I was dreading breaking the news so I did it in the middle of the World Cup Final between France and Brazil). Which brings us to 12 years later…
I haven’t planned a route yet, but I’ll be doing my customary breadth of research over the next few months. If you’ve been to Turkey and would like to share your experience, I’m all ears!
Video for today: I dug around for an intro video to Turkey, and most were rather short. This one has a bit of everything. It would be better with more archaeological sites and less luxury resort detail, but this is someone else’s idea of Turkey. I’d rather make my own.