I shot this photo from the Royal Park resort on my recent travel blogger trip there. Cozumel has some very nice sunsets.
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I have always liked this picture of Piazza San Marco taken looking down on it from the campanile on the square. I loved the black and white nature of the scene offset by the brightly color umbrella of a vendor selling food for the pigeons.
Except on the one occasion where I saw Piazza San Marco in the light of pre-dawn the piazza seems always filled with both pigeons and with tourists content to be pigeon perches. In the pre-dawn the square is so completely empty as to unrecognizable.
< !– google_ad_section_start –>One of the images that I often see on the tourism brochures for Istanbul and Turkey is this image of the town of Ortaköy at the base of the Bosphorus Bridge on the European side. This picturesque and relatively modern mosque is bright on the inside and the exterior makes a wonderful counterpoint to the bridge. The bridge reminds me a great deal of San Francisco’s Golden Gate bridge, especially at night when they light it up with lights that change color. Around the pigeon-filled square are a number of cafes with outdoor seating. This picture is from a beautiful day in February and I can only imagine it is more lovely when the trees have not lost their leaves. Near Ortaköy you can catch a boat to cruise up the Bosphorus to the fortresses, one on the European side and one on the Asian side, built by Mehmed the Conquerer and his father in preparation for the successful siege of Istanbul in 1453.< !– google_ad_section_end –>
see video of Ortaköy at the end of Dolmabahçe Palace, Istanbul Turkey - Amateur Traveler Video Episode 16
Bryce National Park in Utah is a wonderful place to take pictures because of the strange shapes of the hoodoos left mostly by the action of ice. Bryce is high enough that it freezes and then thaws 100 times a year. The last time I was there I was sleeping in a tent in October and the temperature got down into the 20s Fahrenheit. But when the day heated up I was hiking with a day in the 70s or 80s. This action of freezing and thawing cracks the limestone that forms Bryce’s features. Spires like the one shown (Thor’s Hammer) have a deposit of dolomite at the top which is a harder form of limestone. So when the rains come down the dolomite protected the limestone which had been cracked by the ice and this spire did not wash away.
Check out my other pictures of Bryce National Park including hiking “Wallstreet” which is a trail that walks down into the hoodoos.
Copyright 2009 by Chris Christensen
