Istanbul, After Dark

It was a very cold night in February 2024, my last month of living in Turkey. After ten years, I was moving away in March, and the day carried that mix of sadness and excitement that comes with closing a long chapter. I wanted to take a few last photographs of the city before I left.

The wind had been up all day. By the time I reached the water near the Karaköy pier, on the Golden Horn, it was almost twenty to ten, and the waterfront had gone quiet. A few fishermen were angling into the dark beside me, lines out, in no hurry. It was calm enough to set up the tripod without anyone in the way.

Across the water, the New Mosque was lit up against the night sky, and I remember just standing there for a moment thinking how beautiful it was. Then I pointed the camera at it and started working on the settings. I wanted this one sharp: a clear, clean picture of a city I was about to leave.

The Karaköy waterfront at night, looking across the Golden Horn to Eminönü. The New Mosque glows warm against a deep sky, ferries slide past on the water, and the lights of the old city climb the hill behind it.I worked from a tripod so I could keep ISO low and the mosque crisp. I chose the GF 110mm wide open at f/2 with ISO 400, which gave me a shutter speed of 1/8 second: long enough to turn the passing ferry into a soft streak of light, short enough to keep every minaret sharp.