Edirnekapı Bird Market, Istanbul

Edirnekapı Kuş Pazarı (Edirnekapi Bird Market is held on Sundays

I recently spent a very interesting and edifying week at Thatcher Cook's Istanbul Photography Workshop. The focus of the workshop was to "Communicate your unique experience of the world by telling stories through your images".

Thatcher says that, "The telling of stories through images is an exciting and effective way for a photographer to communicate his or her unique experience of the world. The most profound picture stories are multi-layered. How a story is told is often more important than the narrative itself. Mood, color and composition are among the elements used to transform the narrative to the visually poetic."

So, armed with this philosophy, we ventured out on our first day to photograph the bird market in Edirnekapı, by the old city walls of Constantinople. Here men barter for the fastest racing pigeon, or the rarest breed of budgie or some other, to me anyway, unidentifiable bird.

Many of the birds are tethered with string so they can't fly away

when their owners show off their birds

Some of the men didn't want their photo take, but others didn't mind

This man was undoubtedly proud of his his beautiful bird

There was obviously lots of discussion before any sales were made

Drinking tea seemed an important part of the process...

...and food was never far away

I could see that this workshop was to present quite a challenge. This sort of street photography can be intimidating, especially for a woman among hundreds of men ...not to mention the pigeons! But, undaunted, I tried my best, and carried on to the next task!