Stormy clouds over Astana

Here is a shot of the most dominant monument in Astana. This is the Bayterek tower right in the city center. I walked around a lot, trying to find some nice composition, to showcase the tower.

And of the the ones I got is also this view that shows the tower in the back. I used again the Formatt Hitech 10 stop ND filter (the more I take photo the more I tend to use filters :)) and I probably also used a polarizing filter, I’m just not 100% sure about it.

This is a three exposure blend. Photos edited in Lightroom, blended in Photoshop.

Long exposure sun in Astana

And here is one of those great looking buildings. As I understand, this is the complex of administrative buildings of JSC KazMunaiGas, an oil company. It’s build as a circle with many fountains in side of it. And there is also a raised road crossing it, so you have just so many view you can get here. All around :)

For this I went close to one of the waterfall fountains and used the Laowa 12mm lens to get as much of the fountain and the building in the shot. And to get a bit of movement in the sky and blur into the water, I used a Formatt Hitech 10stop ND filter to push the exposure up to 30 seconds. I took 5 exposures, but in the end I blended only 2. Edited in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop.

Expo 2017 Sphere building in Astana

So let’s start with probably the coolest building in Astana. This is the sphere building that was build for the Expo 2017 exhibition that was in Astana last year. It just looks stunning. There are lights on the outside. There are lights on the inside. And there is a huge light pointing up (which you will see in one of the upcoming photos). All animates, all changes, all shows messages on the sphere. It all just looks great once the sun goes down and it gets a bit darker.

I spend few hours in the area and while it was raining most of the time, I did get some nice photos. Here is the first one for you.

This is a single exposure, with a second exposure used to remove the lens flare from the strong light on the right (you can learn how to do that here). Normally I would do few more exposures to get rid of the very strong light reflection on the right, but it was not possible here. I used the Laowa 12mm lens to take this shot, and while it’s a great lens, it’s not weather sealed. And it stopped raining only for minutes. In that condition, I just wanted to take as many photos I could before it rained again, which it did very quickly afterwards.