Turgutreis in Photographs

Turgutreis sits on the west side of the Bodrum peninsula, and I go there on every trip.

Normally I write a trip up while I am still in it, or in the week I get back, so the post arrives as a day by day log with everything still fresh. This one is not that.

So I’m doing it differently. I went back through the photographs and pulled out the ones that still do something to me, and the post is built around those rather than around the calendar. They come from more than one trip, from a March morning and from a July evening, because going back to the same place at different times of the year is the whole reason I keep going back. Each shoot gets a section, and what I write under it is what was going on around the frame rather than a description of what you can already see in it.

The day by day version of these trips is in the March and May posts. This one is the memory.

The Kids at Turgutreis

I was in Turgutreis from about quarter to seven, sitting in my usual spot and waiting for the sunset, but this time I was not alone.

Every trip to Bodrum I come to this spot once and watch the sun go down. I like seeing it at different points in the year, in March, in May, and now in July. I normally come on my own. However this time I had company, someone who also appreciated sunsets, so I was happy to take her to this spot. We sat there for a couple of hours talking and watching it, and it was wholesome.

Three kids pull up at Turgutreis on their scooters and start posing the moment I ask.

Three kids pulled up on their scooters while we were sitting there, cheerful and playing around, each of them holding an ice pole. Not one of them had a phone out. They had come down for the same reason we had.

It took me straight back to being their age. My friends and I were always out playing too, though London meant we did it in the city, and we never had a view like this one in front of us.

I cannot remember what I said to them. I asked if I could take their picture, and they got excited and started posing.

The sunset itself that evening was baya stunning. The photographs hold the kids, and the film holds the thing they had come down to watch.

The sun goes into the sea beside the headland at Turgutreis, with the lighthouse on the breakwater to the right.

My favourite part comes after it has gone, in the hour where everything turns moody.

The Same Spot at Sunrise

I found this spot back in March, and I came to it for the sunrise rather than the sunset.

Two siblings fish at Turgutreis at 5.44am on 13 March 2026.

The sunrise was not it. The sun comes up from behind the mountain here, so there is nothing to watch it happen over, and that is how I worked out that Turgutreis is a sunset spot.

While I was waiting for it I saw these two and we got speaking. They were siblings, the brother over visiting his sister, and they were fishing early with a plan to cook whatever they caught for dinner. I ended up there for an hour and we just talked. Then the cat spawned.

Cat Shoot

This spot was the cat’s residence, and we were the ones in his home. So I gave him his own photoshoot. He loved it.

The cat holds the fork of the tamarisk for two frames, takes the sea wall, then sits for a portrait.

I came away with more than 25 pictures of a cat and cut them down to these four, which meant a Saturday morning editing cat photographs in Lightroom. What has become of my life.

The first two are my favourites, because of how far he disappears into the tree. His coat runs the same browns and greys as the bark he is sitting on, at the same scale, so he reads as part of the trunk until you find the eyes.

The third one is the 135mm end of the kit lens. Standing well back to frame him that size pulls everything behind him forward, so the lighthouse and the boat are right out in the bay and they still sit on his shoulder.

The last one is where the photoshoot claim holds up. He sat still and looked straight down the lens.

The Town Centre

These three come from Turgutreis town centre, off the street of shuttered shops that runs down to the water.

A scooter crosses the end of the street, the turquoise boat sits in the marina, and a couple walk down towards the water.

Scooters kept coming through, so I squatted at the end of the street with the camera up and waited for the next one. I had the shutter at 1/500, which I thought would hold him. For a first go at this I think I did alright, though at 200% in Lightroom there is still some blur on him, so next time I go faster and freeze it properly. The funny part is what it looked like from his side. If he had turned his head right he would have seen a man squatting in the road with a camera, waiting for somebody to drive past. I wonder what he made of that.

The boat is the one I like most. The colours come through, the turquoise against the flat water, and it stands out from everything else moored around it. That boat is always there in Turgutreis.

The last one is the couple walking down holding hands. That one does not need anything from me.

More to follow. I am still going back through the photographs from this trip, and the sections build up as I pick them out.