Golden towers

I wanted to go a bit further back here, to get the whole towers in the shot, but I could not. Still, the 12mm Laowa lens captured them almost completely in one photo. There two golden towers are right in the center of Astana and what I know are office building. You could have actually seen them in one of my recent update, to be exact in this photo. They look quite golden and shiny during the day, but at night, with the blue sky reflecting, they look a bit more green, like here.

This is a three shot blend. I had to mostly just correct the very strong light of the Bayterek monument in the middle and a bit of the other yellow light on the buildings. Edited in Lightroom, finished in Photoshop.

Bronze horses in Astana

I edit my photos quite a lot, but I usually don’t remove much from them. But there are of course exceptions. Today’s photo is one of those.

I really liked these horse statues in front of the Astana opera, but I did not like how they are installed there. There are standing on metal block, that were a bit rusted. And I just did not like that look in the photo. So I went in with Photoshop and removed them completely. Now the horses look more like they were floating, but it’s much better than before :)

This is a two shot blend, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

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: