Photography — Cem Kurtaraner

Photography

Places, structure
and details

Photography has always been one of the ways I train my eye. When I travel, I notice structure, rhythm, contrast, signage, surfaces, routes, and how people move through places. It feeds the same part of my thinking I use in product design: observing carefully, finding order, and deciding what deserves attention.

People walking along a path through a park in low winter sun, bare trees casting long shadows across the grass — Low winter sun on the Long Walk. Everyone converges on the same line across the grass. Windsor

Structure

Buildings, and how they organise the space around them.

A curved blue glass tower and a rectangular office block against a heavy grey sky — Two towers, two eras of glass, under the same weather. London

Angled perforated brick façade of the Tate Modern extension beside a glass building with red steel bracing — Perforated brick against a steel exoskeleton. Two ways of showing the structure. London

The stone clock tower of Southwark Cathedral in front of the tapering glass Shard — A medieval tower and a glass spike, sharing one view. London

The columned marble façade of the Library of Celsus seen from below against a deep blue sky — The Library of Celsus, still holding its grid two thousand years on. Ephesus

Ornate terracotta arches and carved columns inside a Victorian museum, with a mosaic floor below — Terracotta arches, repeated until the corridor reads as one pattern. London

St Paul's Cathedral at dusk with the dome reflected in a wet road and a dark police box in the foreground — After rain, the road does as much work as the dome. London

The ochre dome and battlements of the Pena Palace emerging from hill mist, with visitors on the terrace — Cloud on the hill. The colour reads before the building does. Sintra

Places

Landscape, coast and city, mostly covered on foot.

A single sheep grazing on a green clifftop above a long empty beach and breaking waves — One sheep, a lot of headland, weather coming in. Gower

A green valley of walled fields between hills, seen from a hillside under bright cloud — Field boundaries turn a valley into something you can read. Lake District

A red London bus passing the Royal Exchange, with BUS LANE painted in large letters on the road — BUS LANE, set at the size of the decision it has to carry. London

Blackpool Tower and the seafront in low golden light, seen across a wide empty beach — Late sun on the sand. The tower does all the orientation work. Blackpool

Wooden rowing boats moored in a row beside stone steps under an arched bridge on a grey day — Rowing boats moored in the order they were last used. Richmond

People crossing Plaza Mayor in Madrid past an ornate lamp post and arcaded buildings — A square built as one façade, and everybody crossing it diagonally. Madrid

Details

Signage, colour and small things that only show up once you slow down.

A red telephone box on a paved street beside a black cab and Georgian townhouses — Red box, black cab, white lines. A city colour system in one frame. London

Brightly painted planters and a utility box on a Manchester street corner, red brick buildings behind — Street furniture repainted as a set, so the pattern carries across every surface. Manchester

A narrow Lisbon street of yellow and white buildings with washing hung out and a stairway below — Laundry, awnings and a stairway, all fitted to the same slope. Lisbon

Bronze statue of a bear reaching up a strawberry tree, in front of a pale apartment façade with balconies — Fifty years in the same spot, according to the plinth. Madrid

An ornate green and gold lamp post on Westminster Bridge with the London Eye behind it — Victorian ironwork lined up against a wheel from a century later. London

A seagull perched on the crown of a statue standing on a tall column above a town square — A seagull takes the highest point available. Conwy