Uff how long, no? 6 months? Oh boy !!… had the desire, the photos … but things are happening, and this, like everything else, if you do not organize well, stays to the end that never comes.

I know I’ve said it before, but I’ll try to come more often here and leave you more photos. I know many who pass by here but don’t write any comments … if you let your comment it will encourage me to put more photos… lol

What you see here is a photo of the last photographic journey that I made, this time to Menorca, with friend Zuguzz (the frog don’t come). We went for 5 days and we really enjoyed it and did maaaaany photos. Now you will go see some.

Today I begin with the first session, the Artrutx lighthouse at the south of Ciutadella, near where we had the apartment. Hope you like it and you comment.

After a few days dating and canceling the appointment at the last minute after a broken clutch and an awkward exit to the “pinets” finally we have the startrails that we wanted from Aledua Tower. As the title says, it seemed like an airport, with all this light up and down. The truth is that it is a place very close and we did not visit very often (we’ll repeat, and Sergio will have also his startrails).

As for making, it’s a startrails with 180 shots, for 30” and with 1” between shots (in one stripe plane can be seen):

The later edition was with Lightroom, adjusting levels and temperature, and then tried stacking with Gimp, but change the layer to “lighten only” one by one was a bit tedious and by professional deformation I thought that someone would have already found with this problem, so I searched a bit and found this script (createStack.sh) that solved my problem, belongs to a post that you can see here on how to startrails with linux.

Some (the few who dare to comment on the blog), will have seen that now must login in order to comment. It was imperative, they were owning me with Spam, sorry.

As for the tune, and after a couple of scares we’ve had this week I want a song that always makes me go on, which for me is a celebration of life and we always have to play “kick and forth”

I continue pulling file because weather does not allow us to do what we want, when we want… lol. Let’s see if tomorrow could be. Led by José Manuel Pastor and some of his friends of which I only remember the name of Namor (apologies to the rest) we had a very pleasant night in a former monastery in the town of Altura.
That night I learned a lot and the truth is that the place was awesome.

The first was that well that Augusto illuminated enterely:

Then, Jose Manuel and his colleagues (while Namor was going on his own around) made ​​this shoot (which I like a lot!)

Here you have all the stars of the night (including frog):

And here we all are again, painted by Augustus and Namor (if I remember correctly) and a flash that lit up the back:

As a soundtrack i have this 3 videos (awesome!). Speaking of height… “Higher ground” is a song I knew by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (pay atention to the bassist pants):

But the song is Steve Wonder’s, he has what is known as perfect pitch (it would be nice for me in the dictates!) and very evil for him to play with me… He can hear every mistake in a song…lol :

And one of the most current Playing for a Change version(pay atention to voice of Clarence Bekker (Amsterdam), whom I had the opportunity to see in the Turia River a couple of years ago and I got goosebumps):

The last weekend we went to a night photography workshop in Belchite (Augusto , Alberto and me)

With batteries charged and backpack full of clothes and equipment we went over there.
The first night when we arrived(since we were not invited) (this was a joke that has been misunderstood, they invited us, but we don’t want to get in) to enter Belchite we went to a snowfield that was very close to that recommended Ruth, in charge of rural hotel “Capricho de Goya” and treated us very well all weekend.

The snowfield was painted by Augusto, I painted the front and the ground and fired the remote flash we had inside:

The next day we did a tour around: Azuara, Letux and of course… Belchite:

After the workshop we went to implement it, and the truth is that it was not too good, too many people together. And we used to go to ours , the prove is the image below, in order to get something I had to do an HDR of 3 shots to match the areas and look somewhat decent :

We also did scenes, the “lesbian” when the involved give me permission (lol) and I leave this to you, all of us and the cross was painted by Paco Farero. From this point of view is a bit strange because I did not have the same frame as he and Augusto says: “The painter, is painting to his/her camera”:

And finally I leave the one I like , they are actually 20 shots a minute and then mounted with GIMP (yes, I find it easier than startrails own , since I can add or remove shots of the final result without re-process all), and is cheaper than the “Paint”:

The final summary of the trip is that we were needing more pictures and that I’ll surely return to Belchite.

The Soundtrack is a song that refers to all the evils of civil war, as happens in Belchite: Guns ‘ n’ Roses – Civil War:

Continuing with photos of Arcos de las Salinas. The Sunday morning stay in bed late and take breakfast at the hotel and went to find locations.

We approach the birth of the river Arcos and I do a test of my Nexus 4 camera.

Then we went to “Los Cuchillos”

We also visited an abandoned Hotel (too bad !), we went to buy some snacks, and dinner to the chapel to get an overview of the town, is a HDR, so missing metadata:

We then returned to the “Los Cuchillos” and we took pictures like this:

If I remember correctly Augusto paint the water and background pines and I paint the stones in both sides of the river, while Jordi and Rafa ate sunflower seeds… lol.

Today I put two songs (with the same letter) and you have to choose according to your mood: Parece que aun fué ayer – Los Suaves

Acoustic version :

Heavy version:

Last Thursday we don’t have model, and the night only gave two good shots, but I really like both.
First is totally painted by me, Augusto take holiday. It’s a place where we’ve been, but until now I didn’t liked the result. And it is already the saying goes… “If you want well-made bed… make it yourself.”

The whole scene is painted by a lantern with orange filter and black paper to prevent showing to camera.

And the other image have been painted enterely by Sergio with the same mechanism, congratulations!

The BSO will put a song that I feel totally identified, look at lyrics, the video is not great quality, but has the lyrics in spanish. It’s “Old Time Rock & Roll” by Bob Seger :

Yes, I know that many will sound because it’s in the film Risky Bussiness of Tom Cruise, but since I saw this ad for Guitar Hero and Heidi Klum… what want me to tell you… do not even know who Tom Cruise is… hahaha.

Yes, I know we’re all sick of the wind, annoying and a headache, but it’s not bad, leave pictures as I bring today. A very clear day, low and scattered clouds and a spectacular blue sky.
The photo is made with the 24-105 (24mm) and the circular polarizer. No photoshop, I’ve only played a bit in Lightroom levels. I took 7 photos and then I put together with Hugin. I left image at 2500px wide … but if my camera has 18mpx and 7 photos… guau!, lol

As OST I’ve to put something active, that gives us wings… Kiko Veneno! Memphis blues again… if I repeat myself, sorry… but there appears Santiago Segura and gives a touch of necessary humor.

The second day we were in Arcos de las Salinas rippled pretty, Morning visit the ancient salt that give the village its name. There are still remains of the pond where the water became dry, the water pumping windmills and church. Also the place is quite secluded and almost no light pollution. We had a very good day:

Salinas de Arcos de las Salinas, an HDR with the polarizing filter:

Then we were talked about Dueñas, a town like many other abandoned and not wonder… with the SUV cost us quite get, is tired and there was too much grace to go around, especially at night, so we made some shots daytime and towards Arcos again.

Overview of Dueñas (multiple shots at the 12 and the polarizing filter and coupled with Hugin):

In the afternoon, after lunch we went for a walk around Arcos, a path that bordered a stream and we will find this waterfall:

HDR waterfall in Arcos de las Salinas:

Then we went to dinner and back to Salinas, but otherwise:

Portal of the church (Illuminated by Augusto, and I think the stone wall and floor painted them myself):

Now instead of a long exposure we wanted to show the Milky Way:

And who says you can not do night panoramic? Here are two:

With the mill that you had seen in the morning as the protagonist:

And with the church:

I have taken this week to publish the post, but do not complain that it’s very full. To top it off, the soundtrack will put a big Spanish guitar master that has left us this week with a song I had not heard until my mate Ivan interpreted in a hearing (that hard!) Is Czardars V. Monti:

Today I remembered that last year we did a photo out of several days to Arcos de las Salinas there CEFCA is building an astronomical observatory, and the first night we went up there. We put a little nose and kindness Watchers did the rest, we were shown the facilities under construction, they left us a tracking tripod, we were shown the programs used to process the images obtained with telescopes. Currently they only started is the small 80cm (equivalent approx. 3700mm focal length), the other if I remember correctly will have a mirror of 2.5m (over 9000mm focal lenght) and for us it is a telephoto lens 400mm … lol.

Here you have a shot with the 12mm and ISO 160 , we caught a night not too good , it was cold, windy and there were clouds. They told us that from there on a clear night looked easily Valencia.

Then I leave a photo to my surprise was placed in the 3rd-4th page Popularity at 500px which I recommend if you do not know , my profile is this. It is 9 shots vertically with 8mm and subsequently coupled with Hugin Panorama Creator:

We’ve got a good time… and there are still pictures to show, but that’s another post. Now I leave you with the soundtrack, a group that gets current songs and gives them a vintage feel, in this case New Orleans style, I think the song needs no introduction :