Photographs and articles by A. Cemal Ekin
This post and all the photographs are a long-winded get-well card for my sister Binnaz. Get well soon, Binnaz. Jan and I are sending you our love and best wishes along with these photographs. A little over seven years ago, I took a helicopter ride from Newport. There was no set destination, and my friend …
Spring arrived suddenly. I have even noticed the growth of little shoots of flowers waking up overnight. Around this time, I see a green glow around the trees. The buds or leaves are not yet visible but their tiny buds turning green adds that green haze. Very lovely. Spring Vista From High Above Aside from …
July 5, 2011, was the date, I had the helicopter ride that had been in the planning for a while, courtesy of my graduating class and my sister and brother-in-law. It was a gorgeous day. Dennis picked me up around 2:00 PM, and we drove to Newport. Another couple was going up for a short …
A few posts ago, I wrote about a wonderful experience flying over the Great Salt Lake and presented the contents of Folio 1. Instead of going in sequential order, I decided to present the last folio in this collection, Folio 8 | The Human Touch Collection after the first. As you will read in the …
I am getting close to finishing this project. This folio is about the limits of everything. Water meets land or air with a boundary, colors change creating another boundary, and various shapes are formed or erased by their boundaries being there or becoming diffuse. The ecosystem of the Great Salt Lake is so diverse with …
A new addition to the Great Salt Lake folio series is the Folio 6 | The Spiral Jetty Collection. The Spiral Jetty is one of the best-known earthwork or land art by Robert Smithson. He conceived the idea and constructed the land art using basalt rocks available on site. Robert Smithson finished the jetty a …
This is the final installment of the series on the Great Salt Lake. Vegetation around and in the Great Salt Lake does not impress the viewer with lush foliage or colorful flowers. However, the halophiles require high salinity and create interesting patterns against the colors of the lake. Mostly marshes around the periphery and algae …
In the continuing series of Great Salt Lake folios, I now jump to somewhere in the middle, Folio 4 | The Fields of Color Collection. Minerals and evaporation in the Great Salt Lake work like the palette and the brush of an artist to create an amazing range of colors and abstract “art,” nature’s painting …
Looking down at the Great Salt Lake is a surreal experience, not only do the colors change unexpectedly but also the surface-depth-bottom relations present visual riddles. There I was in the helicopter, looking down at a reddish-orange, or orangish-red water not being able to figure out what lied on the surface and where the bottom …
Over the Great Salt Lake The Found Patterns Folio is the new addition to the GSL Folio series. With eight photographs, it presents the patterns created by nature and by human touch. Nature’s patterns with a palette of minerals and evaporation challenge the canvas of most painters both in structure and artistry. Human touch, on …
The colorful Great Salt Lake A couple of years ago, I received a very special gift for my 65th birthday from my wife and daughter: a helicopter tour to the Spiral Jetty in the Great Salt Lake. The trip was extraordinary for several reasons. First, it was my first chopper flight, a tiny one at …
Infrared photography interests me with its surreal-looking landscapes, objects, and people. But all those pale in comparison to IR aerial photography. Topography becomes abstract, clouds and shadows ethereal and elusive, and the scratches man has made on earth seem insignificant. Infrared Earthscapes Majestic Views I have taken many such photographs and shared some in the …
I flew to and from Salt Lake City within the last few weeks. I got a window seat to take photographs and found an infinitely variable, ethereal subject, clouds. They are the nice puffy ones that dot the sky and create beautiful shadows down below. The space between them allowed me to see and photograph …
Spiral Jetty, a Land Art Today I took a helicopter ride over the Great Salt Lake to see the famous landmark Spiral Jetty. The trip was extremely enjoyable and the view, impressive. The lake is so large that it feels like the sea, but the feeling of vastness quickly takes a back seat to the …
Change Your Vantage Point Seeing is the essence of photography, and I saw some new places and saw again familiar places from a totally new vantage point, aerial perspective. One summer day in 2006, Barry, a friend of mine, an old pilot who got the itch to fly again, invited me to go with him …
