Deep water soloing in the center of Antalya again

For years I’ve wanted to get good photos of the climbing traverse that I do regularly on the limestone cliffs (falez) near the Ramada Hotel in the center of Antalya.  It’s only about five minutes to get there by bicycle from my house, and since I can get a quick climbing workout without needing a belay partner, I go frequently.

Now that I have an action camera I figured maybe I could take some decent photos.  Of course if I go by myself like I normally do, then I end up with photos like this:

20190726_074211A by bryandkeith on flickr

20190726_075210A by bryandkeith on flickr

So I recruited Özgür and Sibel for a morning of falez photos.  I took one shot of Özgür before giving the camera to Sibel to take photos from the water.

20190726_080449A by bryandkeith on flickr

20190726_080502A by bryandkeith on flickr

However, it turned out that we had a constant problem with spots of water on the lens.  Is this a common problem with these action cameras?  We ended up with blurry/spotty photos like these:

20190726_080925A by bryandkeith on flickr

20190726_080749A by bryandkeith on flickr

20190726_083002A by bryandkeith on flickr

or perhaps like this when we got into the sun:

20190726_082504A by bryandkeith on flickr

If you take the camera underwater (like we almost always did in Sulawesi), then the water problem goes away:

20190726_084527A by bryandkeith on flickr

but that’s not exactly deep water soloing, is it?  What to do?

Well, about a week later, I hosted a Hungarian bicyclist, Viktor.  Viktor travels around bicycling, climbing, and mountaineering, supporting his habit by taking photos and videos.  He was very excited to try the deep water soloing at the falez.  And he brought his action camera, a real GoPro!

Well, what do you know, Viktor’s photos look like this:

C:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GOPR2680.GPR by bryandkeith on flickr

C:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GOPR2683.GPR by bryandkeith on flickr

Viktor gave me the camera for a bit so I could take some photos of him.

C:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GOPR2696.GPR by bryandkeith on flickr

C:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GOPR2702.GPR by bryandkeith on flickr

But to prove that it’s the photographer, not the camera, check out this sequence that Viktor shot:

C:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GOPR2687.GPR by bryandkeith on flickr

C:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GOPR2688.GPR by bryandkeith on flickr

C:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GOPR2689.GPR by bryandkeith on flickr

C:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GOPR2691.GPR by bryandkeith on flickr

Thank you, Viktor, for finally getting me some nice falez photos.  Here’s a short plug for KisGeri 24, the Rock Climbing and Highline Festival that Viktor organizes every year in Hungary’s Geresce Mountains.

IMG_20190803_130027 by bryandkeith on flickr

And Viktor’s parting shot:

C:\DCIM\100GOPRO\GOPR2710.GPR by bryandkeith on flickr

This entry was posted in Climbing, Turkey and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

One Response to Deep water soloing in the center of Antalya again

  1. Mike Painter says:

    Great pictures of a different kind of landscape!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.