5 Photo Spots in Minsk within walking distance

Please have a look at your city travel bucket list. Does it include Minsk, the capital of Belarus? If not, maybe it's time to put it on the list if you're not discouraged by a few formalities.

Traveling to Belarus

Minsk is not a city for a spontaneous weekend trip. You may need to obtain a visa in advance if you're a resident of one of the 30 countries listed on the visa homepage.

It usually takes two weeks to get the visa. If you shell out extra $$$ you can opt for the fast lane and get it within a week.

Once you have the visa in your Passport, you need to fill out an (actually, two identical) immigration permits on the plane.

They'll keep one copy at the passport control, and one copy needs to stay in your Passport. All. The. Time!

When you arrive at the Minsk airport, you need to purchase additional health insurance. And no, your health insurance from home does not work here. It's 1 EUR per day. I could buy this health insurance from a small counter in the arrival hall.

Once you have your health insurance plus the immigration permits in your Passport, you can proceed to the passport control. If either of the two is missing, they'll send you back.

Once I managed to get through the health insurance purchase process, passport control, and customs, I took a taxi to Hotel Europe that I booked via booking.com. Many spots worth seeing are in walking distance from the hotel. And if you're a lazy bone, there were lots of Ubers, too. Just make sure you have a credit card in your Uber account as PayPal didn't work when I was there.

Next, I needed a local SIM card. My cell phone operator in Austria lists data roaming in Belarus in roaming zone 10. In other words: don't do it. It's expensive as hell.

You can buy a Velcom SIM card in Minsk, but you'll get a particular tourist plan that will expire the day you leave the country. I needed the Passport (including the visa), the immigration permit, my hotel address, and they even took a picture of me.

Schedule 20-30 minutes to get a local SIM card. The Internet worked well.

After I had completed all the formalities, I went for my first nightly Photowalk in Minsk. It's one of the most splendid European cities I've seen.

But what I noticed first is that the city, at least the center, is so clean.

Not a single piece of waste was lying around, and you'll notice wastebaskets every 150 feet. Minsk has lots of beautiful squares, parks, and buildings, and everything is well lit at night.

Victory Square with the eternal flame

 Victory square is the city center of Minsk. Busy roads surround the square, and to get to the place you need to find the underpass. There's one on the left and one of the right. Don't try to cross the streets. Primarily when a police officer is regulating the traffic nearby. Terrible idea.

Victory Square in Minks, Belarus during the blue hour.

The flame in front of the monument was lit in 1961 due to the 17th anniversary of the liberation of Minsk.

I got there just in time for the end of the blue hour that I determined by using the ProCamera widget. Here's more info about how to determine the blue hour using a blue hour calculator.

Gorky Park with Ferris Wheel

 Gorky Park is right near victory square, and I went there for an early morning walk when no one was there.

Gorky Park in Minsk, Belarus, in fall.

I saw only a few workers plus one person standing around, looking important, who took care of greenery.

Finding the Ferris wheel may be a little difficult unless you can read the Russian signs. You won't see the Ferris wheel from a distance. It's located on a small hill. Once you've entered the park and are in the forest, take one of the uphill paths on the left. It will take you to the Ferris wheel. The rest of the park is also quite beautiful. I enjoyed strolling around there in autumn.

Ferris wheel at the Gorki Park in Minsk, Belarus

As there were no people nearby and I had time to compose the frame, I chose to shoot this photo as a RAW on my iPhone 7 Plus.

Palace of the Republic

I'm not an expert in architecture. I just take photos. But a building like the Place of the Republic comes to my mind when I think of typical Russian Architecture. The entire building is just massive, and it's in the middle of a vast square. It takes you like 10 minutes to cross that square on foot.

Palace of the Republic in Minsk, Belarus

So there's enough room to zoom out with your feet if you don't have a wide-angle lens like the Moment Wide Lens for your iPhone.

National Academic Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Theatre

I will call this one just "Bolshoi Theatre." Typing "National Academic Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Theatre" seems too prone to typos. I hope you're okay with that.

The Bolshoi Theatre is a 10 minutes walk from the Palace of the Republic. I found this water basin right in front of it. I don't know if it has fountains; I didn't see any during my four days stay in Minsk.

Bolshoi Theatre Minsk, Belarus

Light show at the national library of Belarus

 In case you wondered what the "+1" in the headline means, it's this spot. It's not within walking distance of the ones I mentioned previously.

But still, It's quite easy to get there. Just use an Uber. I had some issues with PayPal when trying to get an Uber in Minsk. But once I added my credit card and used it instead of PayPal, everything was okay. Maybe PayPal is blocked/not available in Belarus? Who knows.

The building is full of bulbs that will create a spectacular light show at night. In between, some ads run. I didn't take the time up to the minute, but the light show repeats after perceived 10 minutes or so.

Shooting RAW at night vs. ProCamera Low Light Modes

During the stay in Minsk, I took hundreds of iPhone night photos to compare the results from shooting RAW at night to the LowLight Modes of ProCamera.

No matter which method you use, be sure to bring your tripod. You will need it for taking photos with your iPhone at night.

To cut a long story short, shooting RAW with the iPhone works great if you're photographing well-lit places like the Victory Square or the Bolshoi Theatre and are comfortable shooting in manual mode in ProCamera, turning ISO down to 100 and compensating that with slower shutter speed.

It does not work so well when shooting darker scenes like the National Library of Belarus. Here I used the familiar ProCamera Low Light Modes.

Beware that shooting RAW adds one more step to your workflow. As a RAW photo is an unmodified dump of the camera sensor data from your iPhone, you need to develop the RAW first using either ProCamera RAW development or Adobe Lightroom Mobile. I've a dedicated FAW about shooting RAW with iPhone.

I use Adobe Lightroom Mobile to develop RAW files. It's one of the few recommended iPhone photo editing apps that I've regularly been using.

The results you get with Lightroom Mobile and especially the denoise feature are fantastic! First, I hesitated a bit, but the 10$ a month is worth it.

I also moved my portfolio website to Adobe Portfolio, which is included in the plan. Previously, I paid 12$ a month for my portfolio website alone.