Bulent Atalay (batalay)

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Name: Bulent Atalay Contact
Country: United States
Intro: Greetings, my name is Bulent Atalay. I live in the United States, where I am a professor of physics, an artist and an author.

I have always had an abiding passion for photography. In doing a GOOGLE search for Ponte Buriano, the bridge Leonardo da Vinci had used in the Portrait of Mona Lisa, I came across TrekEarth, and joined the site on the advice of Sabrina Pezzoli, sehkmet73, who had photographed the bridge. I had no idea that this was to become an addictive site in cyberspace for me.

Many of the images I've seen at the TE-site are nothing short of sensational, even inspiring! My interest, I suspect like that of many other subscribers to TE, is in cobbling together the aesthetic elements of art and the technical elements of the camera. In reviewing the pictures shot by others, and receiving reviews from them, I have learned a great deal, and I hope I've imparted some useful information to them. I've come to realize that TrekEarth is all about intelligent people making intelligent and incisive observations.

When I find time from my university duties, I travel, frequently lecturing on cruise ships — mainly on the "A-subjects" — art, archaeology, astrophysics and atomic physics. (I am not very good on the "B-subjects" — especially business and banking.) The photos I post generally reflect the diversity of my passions. Along with some of the better photographs I've shot on cruises, there are images from every day life, images from the microscopic world produced with macro lenses, and images from the macroscopic world produced with telephoto lenses and telescopes. The beauty we encounter in nature is found at wildly different scales of size.

A LESSON FROM LEONARDO

"We need only to observe, and ponder, that the commonplace becomes wondrous, and the wondrous commonplace."

That last quote comes from my own book on Leonardo, Math and the Mona Lisa, (Smithsonian Books 2004). On books about Leonardo, the greatest artist/scientist/engineer in history, the book is a distant second to Dan Brown's 'Da Vinci Code,' but it is far ahead of the third bestselling book. It has already appeared in (or will soon appear) in its twelfth language. Ultimately, the book is about the "real Leonardo," and the intersection of art and science in describing the nature — much as photography endeavors to do. If Leonardo were alive today, I would venture, photography would be among his passions! But then, he might not have had time to create the two most famous paintings in history.

My new book, Leonardo's Universe, was just released by National Geographic Books. A good friend and former student, Keith Wamsley, is my coauthor in the work that represents a marriage of great Renaissance art and world-class National Geographic photography. Between July 31-August 24/2008 I was on a 'working vacation,' giving talks on Crystal Serenity Cruises #8318 and #8319. In 2009 I will be on cruise #9317

THEMES:
• My daily drive to work.
• Life on the Venetian Canals.

My personal website can be accessed by clicking on Bulent Atalay

Best wishes,

Bulent
Member Since: 2006-09-02
Equipment: fujifilm fine pix 4700 zoom, Miranda AF, Nikon Coopix S600, Nikon D-70, Nikon D200, Nikon F, Nikon N90, Nikon-2020
Note: Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer (19164)
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