Rainy evening in Astana

Another rainy shot for you today. It just rained like crazy that evening in Astana, and the puddles were just huge everywhere. I had to clean my lens a lot that evening, but somehow I managed to avoid rain drops in all of my photos. To tell the truth, the Canon 24-70 lens is great in the rain, as the huge lens hood covers the whole front of it. Not anymore with the new version though :)

This is a three shot blend, again mostly because of the Beyterek tower in the middle, that’s just so bright. Edited in Lightroom, blended in Photoshop.

Long exposure reflection in Astana

While walking around the city of Astana at 5 in the morning, I came across this amfiteatre (that’s what I think it is). And while it was still partially a construction site, the view from the walkway was worth a shot. It was still quite dark, so I was guessing a bit on the composition, but I did get it nice and centered in the end.

This is a blend of three exposures. Most is from a single shot, but I used others to darken the highlights a bit. Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Sphere building in orange

Yes, I know it’s another photo of the Expo 2017 sphere building in Astana, Kazakhstan. I just took so many of them. I took shots from every view I could get, and they are all blue hour. And if you wonder why, it’s because of a strong rain.

When I arrived to the sphere building, it was not raining, but it was already grey and overcast. So I took few photos and waited. And withing few minutes I had to hide. Even so I got soaked quite a bit. Btw. one thing I always do when I travel, almost regardless where I go and what time of the year it is. I carry a thin jacket against wind and rain. I used it in Italy, I used it in Dubai and I used it in Astana. Always comes in handy.

This is a single shot, edited in Lightroom and Photoshop. I also used a part of a second shot just to get rid of a lens flare. You can see how it’s done here.

City center enter of Astana

And back to Astana :) This is a view from quite high up of the center park of Astana. There are actually quite a few parks around the center, which makes the city look really nice. I took a lot of panoramas of this view, but I wanted also one done verticaly.

And this is the one. If you look closely, the part of a roof you can see in the bottom left, is a lower part of the building I was standing on. Actually I wanted a shot where you could see the walls of the building, but it just too distorted in the end, so I let it be. Btw. the cloudy sky is from it raining just minutes before I took this photo.

This is a three shot vertorama, each shot from three exposures. Combined in PTgui, blended in Photoshop.

Very early morning reflection

And this is one of the photos taken before sunrise. Really nice to have a place just for oneself. Too bad that the decorative light were not in the morning. I actually mention that as one of the reasons not to take photos in the morning, in my article ‘Why shoot in the early morning’ here. But of course there are more reasons to do so :)

This is a two shot blend, done in Photoshop. I used the 12mm Laowa lens to get as much of the reflection as I could, as the puddle was quite close to the bridge.