Waterfall from the sky

This scene just looked so great in person. When they turned on the strong lights on top of the Expo 2017 sphere building, the lights illuminated the heavy rain that was in progress in that moment. And when the light hit the water, it looked exactly as a waterfall falling from the sky right onto the sphere. Too bad I did not manage to capture also a video, but it was really raining like crazy.

I even needed a wider lens, than the 16mm I used, but the 12mm I have is just not weather sealed at all. So I had no choice. Still, the scene was great, and I’m lucky that I even captured anything :) I should maybe animate this one in Plotagraph Pro. Could look great.

This is a single exposure, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Bayterek tower reflection

So is it Bayterek tower or Baiterek tower? I found both spellings on the internet, and even both in the same articles (on Wikipedia for instance). I would presume it’s Bayterek tower, as that looks more close to Russian spelling, but I don’t really know.

I was thinking of going also up to check out the view from insides, but did not get to it in the end. But I did get a lot of photos in the area around it. For this one, I found the biggest puddle that I could, to get a perfect reflection. And I got it :)

A moment after I got this photo, a little boy started riding through the puddle on his bicycle. And his timing was always perfect. When I was setup to take a long exposure, he would ride through the shot. When I changed my settings to a fast shot, to catch him in the photo, he would move away. And he did this repeatedly :) But I already had one clean photo, so I was satisfied with the result.

This is a three shot vertorama, each shot from 5 exposures. The Beyterek tower has just too many light on it, and they are all very bright. Blending them into a photo is really not easy.

Night view of Astana

While in Astana, I also had the opportunity to go up to a roof of one of the skyscrapers in the city. And yes, I had problem with rain, but luckily it stopped right as I was on the way there.

One of the buiding I could see in full from up there was this long arch building, which I think (based on Google maps) is the House of Ministries. Feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken. It’s so huge that there are two roads going through it :). I could not even get it into one photo, even from so far away.

This is a two shot panorama, merged in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop.

And here are few details:

Flower reflection in the morning

This photo does not look like it, but in reality it’s a three shot vertorama. The reason for that is, that the puddle I used to get this reflectin, was very close to the flower installation. So I used the tilt shift lens to get three shots, that I then merged.

I found this light flower installation close to my hotel in Astana. I don’t know if it’s permanent, or why it’s there, but it just looked great. And one morning I walk to it before the sunrise and since it rained during the night, I had enough puddle to get the reflection I wanted.

This is a three shot panorama, merged in Lightroom, edieted in Photoshop.

Fountain at the sphere building

I did not want to post another photo of the Expo 2017 sphere building in Astana so early again. But it’s just such a cool looking building. And especially like this, at night with all the lights on.

Here I managed to capture it completely in one color. But that I needed to use a longer exposure really helped with that. I also moved a bit back to get the fountain right in front of it. I could not get the exactly what I wanted, as parts of the square were fenced off due to constructions. Still I got almost to the spot I wanted :) And you can’t even tell how much it rained when I took this shot :)

This is a two shot blend. I used most of the photo from one exposure and then used the second one to darken the lights of the fountain a bit. Edited in Lightroom, blended in Photoshop.