There was a lot of controversy around the construction of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Istanbul. It was not that people did not like the beauty of this mosque. The controversy was more about Sultan Ahmed himself. First, he had not won any great victories for Islam that would justify building such an opulent mosque. [...]

This trolley in Istanbul runs the length of Istiklal Caddesi (street) which is a pedestrian street in Beyoğlu. Beyoğlu is an area of the city just north of the Golden Horn which is where the old European Embassies were located and therefore one of the most European parts of the old city. Now it is [...]

You new this series of food encounters would have to get to this topic eventually. It was one thing to run into vendors in the marketplaces in Oaxaca selling bugs for food (crickets I think) and quite another one to be offered to share a dish of bugs, chilies and onions on a bed of [...]

Beignets themselves are not that strange a food. We certainly ate stranger things when we were in New Orleans like alligator paté and pizza fish. But the trip to the famous Cafe du Monde produced some of the better pictures. Beignets are basically a deep fried dough covered with powdered sugar. What caught my eye [...]

I want to focus this week on strange encounters with food while traveling. Sometimes this will be encountering strange food but in today’s photo the food was normal but the encounter was not what I expected.
I went to Tanzania with a group of 10 people from my church and the main reason we went was [...]

The picture for this month’s wallpaper is from Oaxaca Mexico

Regular width (1600 x 1200) without calendar
Widescreen (1920 × 1200) without calendar

To use:
1. Click the link above to open wallpaper in your browser.
2. Right click and select “Use image as desktop picture” or similar

Rounding out a week’s worth of pictures of doors is this door from Toledo, the former capital of Spain. I found this on one of the back streets by just trying to get lost wandering around the twisty little back streets of that city. I like the contrast between the armored right side of the [...]

What’s wrong with this picture? This is the front door to a restaurant in Santorini. But where is the restaurant? Because the towns on Santorini are often built on cliffs this door leads to stairs down to the restaurant.This is a surprisingly common sight on the island as the picture below will attest to.

Speaking of buildings that have seen better days, this one from my trip to Oaxaca caught my eye. This door has become a patchwork as they have endeavored at least 3 times to fix holes. It is certainly an imperfect door, but imperfection is interesting visually.

Two things draw me to photos like this one. The first is the color. Ansel Adams I am not. I love vibrant color. The second is the odd asymmetry of this picture. Symmetry can certainly be beautiful, but as Mona Lisa taught us, asymmetry is intriguing.