Kira

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The English Club visited Amissos on a cool November afternoon. The the wintry sunlight was fading fast, and slid golden over the twin tumuli atop the hill above the old harbor, slowly fading to twilight blues as it sank behind the coastal mountains. The air was cool, a faint breeze blowing in from the sea. Situated  to give panoramic views of the Westwards from Samsun, the city seemed, for once, tranquil in the Black Sea dusk.

Amissos is the name of the ancient settlement which preceded modern Samsun. It was a trading port in Hellenistic times, and famed as belonging to the homeland of the Amazons. Samsun’s modern citizens use the name mainly to mean the site of two tombs and a modern cafe somewhat East of the city, and also to denote the otherwise invisible historic forebear of the ramshackle modern town.

The tumuli are named Kalkanca and Baruthane, according to the Directorate of Culture and Tourism’s Samsun handbook, and may have been used as lighthouses; from a certain angle the two mounds align and only one is visible, apparently indicating an ancient harbor entrance. Claims have been made that the hills were used as temple spots for Roman dieties as well.

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Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.

Living history Viking combat

This is my favorite shot from the Gorodets living history festival in 2006. It always makes me think I should title it, “No shit, there I was…” The guys fighting are mainly college students who do this as a hobby. It’s live steel, dull weapons but otherwise real. My husband joined the group and got to find out exactly how authentic Viking re-enactment combat can be when he took an axe direct to his shin bone and had to be carried out of the woods on his shield.

The really annoying thing about that… I mean other than the four months following of bringing him beer and coffee while be propped up his cast… was that we’d just watched “300″ before he went out to the event. And I quoted Queen Gorgo to him as he went out the door, “Come back with your shield, or on it!”. Sigh. And now he’ll never, ever let go of the bloodstained thing.

Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.

This is Karina, the first of the two models I’ve been working with and the reason I went out and bought studio lights. We did a lot of playing around with props and poses - I love the golden age quality of this image- sort of a vision of Queen Maeve of Connaught via 1940s Hollywood.

Shot with one softbox for lighting on my usual Canon 350D, 18-55mm lens at 27mm. The matte black background is wide rolls of crepe paper I taped to my bookshelf. I did a little bit of “painting with light” on this one - above the basic image layer I created a transparent layer set on “soft light” and then dodged and burned that layer by painting white, black, and golden yellow at 8% transparency over the photo.

Originally published at Seeking the World's Soul. You can comment here or there.