This year, the top 20 best images of Wiki Loves Earth 2024 had 7 photos from Türkiye, and the Wikipedians in the country invited the award-winning photographers from Türkiye to their online meeting to celebrate and hear the stories of their photos. The group was honored to host Fatih Yılmaz, İsmail Taşgeldi, Turan Reis, and Ekrem Kalkan at the last meeting of the year 2024.
All those names are recipients of awards in the landscape category. Fatih Yılmaz (User:Rotadefterim) won first prize in the landscape category with his Lake Burdur photo. He works as a teacher at Niğde, and he told Wikipedians how he started photography only 6 years ago when he was appointed as a teacher in Bitlis because only then could he afford to buy a camera. He is a self-taught photographer. “I was lucky because Bitlis is a photography heaven with its awe-inspiring landscape,“he says. “I learned many things from the internet” he adds. He took his award-winning photo in Burdur, where he visited for a few days to take pictures at the end of his summer vacation spent with the family. He wasn’t expecting to receive an award. He thinks his photo was chosen because it is highly related to the contest’s theme. “For a photo-lover, it is a great pleasure to see that his photographs are so much valued,” he says.
Ismail Taşgeldi’s (User:Ismailtasgeldi) two photographs were in the list of this year’s best 20 images: his photo capturing view of Yaylalar village with its back to the Kaçkar Mountains was awarded 3rd place, and the photo of a thirsty horse drinking water in Hürmetçi Reeds in front of the view of Mount Erciyes was awarded 5th place. Mr. Taşgeldi says that he especially likes to take photos in cloudy weather; therefore he checks out the meteorology all the time. He explained that he went to Yaylalar village after seeing stunning photos of this village on the internet and took the award-winning photo. He added that he went to the same place a year later, but he could not find the same light.
Mr. Taşgeldi likes the photograph in Hürmetçi Reeds more because it is a photograph that he has put more effort into. He stated that the reeds are only 5 minutes away from his house and that whenever it rains he goes there to take photos. Taşgeldi saw the tiny horse drinking water in a place where herds normally roam and took this photo using a drone. He likes the feeling of loneliness captured in the photo.
For this competition, Turan Reis (User:Turreis10700) submitted an autumn photo of Şavşat town which he took in 2015 and received 8th place in the landscape category. Mr. Reis is a mechanical engineer who climbs mountain peaks on weekends to take photographs. He camps on the summits with the “Lovers of Peaks” photography group. During his talk, he emphasized that he climbed 3,000-meter peaks although he is orthopedically disabled. He took the award-winning photograph in Şavşat during a trip to Karagöl. Turan Reis states that although his main motivation to take photos is not photo competitions, but receiving an award encourages him to continue photography. Taşgeldi said that the WLE organizers could not reach him because he failed to provide an e-mail address, but Refik Demir, who won first prize in the 2023 Wiki Loves the Earth Turkey contest with his photo of the Gito Plateau, was also in their “Lovers of Peaks” group and the organizers could reach him thanks to Mr. Refik.
Ekrem Kalkan’s (User:Kecags) Yedigöller National Park photo received 10th place in the landscape category. He explained he started photography when someone gave him a camera as a gift. However, he couldn’t find a place where he could get training. Therefore he didn’t have someone to tell him whether his photos were good and he was discouraged from taking photos at the beginning. He doesn’t want others to get through such difficulties, “therefore I started a photography academy at his workplace, the Sancaktepe Municipality.” he told us. He is teaching there for the 7th term and is very proud of his students; especially when their photo ranked even better than his photos in competitions.
Kalkan took the photo in Yedigöller with a drone after stopping the car to capture the curve he saw on the road. He took a 9-frame panorama but didn’t like the panorama, so he chose one frame to submit to the contest. He had learned about the WLE from another photographer’s social media posts. He said that he was unfamiliar with commons.wikimedia.org and failed to enter his email address and he is thankful for the organizers who made every effort to reach him.
Can you help us translate this article?
In order for this article to reach as many people as possible we would like your help. Can you translate this article to get the message out?
Start translation