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.

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.