I turned around the corner on a hot and dusty day in the city of Samarkhand in Uzbekistan. And the ensemble of madrasas came into view, carrying the impressive name Registan, meaning the "Sandy Place". And I had to pause a moment, nay many, to admire the scene that unfolded in front of me.
As I was working my way from West to East along the Silk Route, the historical monuments I had visited became more impressive with each new one. It, however, truly culminated in the Registan, the heart of the ancient city of Samarkand of the Timurid dynasty, which dated back to the 14th-16th century. The trifecta of three madrasas, the Ulugh Bek Madrasah, the Tilya Kori Madrasa, and the Sher-Dor Madrasa, suffered heavily from a lack of maintenance over the last few centuries, and it was the heavy-handed Soviet-era restoration that brought these beautiful edifices back to their former glories.
I returned back to the Registan during a summer evening, and I was surprised to see rare cloud formations take over the sky. As the sun slowly set and lent a bit of color to the sky, the lights of the Registan turned on, and provided it with its nightly attire. It was this that I had hoped to capture. And even with a wide field of view of the 16mm lens, the grand scene in front of me was hard to capture completely.
This image is a 3-image HDR composite shot at 17mm and F11 at ISO 100
Registan
Samarkand Uzbekistan