SIS PARTY

Last week it was my sisters and also mine birthday. But my sister turned 40 and she wanted to do a big party with the closest family members and friends. I thought of it as a excelent oportunity to be with my family and friends but also to take some portrait shots. I knew that there would be children playing, people having a good time, and I tried to capture that good mood of the day.

Here are some photos :

KART - OPENLIMITS

The company where I work - Openlimits - celebrated its 25 years of existence. They organized a lunch followed by a Kart competition.

As always, I was asked to make a photo report of the event.

One of the things I wanted to do was to train the panning technique. My brother in Law lent me a lens that I love (Canon 70-200 F4.0) and I used it for that.

I also wanted to get some "frozen" ones.

Here are some of the photos:

CAPTURE THE STARS

Good Milky Way photos are hard to acomplish but the results are amazing when the photos came out as planned. Last weekend I decided to make another try.

That are a few things that we need to do to prepare for a Milky Way shoot:

First we need to know the moon phase. For that I usually go to a site where I can see the moon calendar/phases.

Moon Tracks

You just need to choose the correct Hemisphere (Southern, Northen) depending on where you are in the world. The perfect phase is when there is a New Moon or near that.

Another important thing is to check the weather to see if the sky it's not going to be cloudy.

Use a tripod.

Check the light pollution. You can find out online where there is less pollution

Light Pollution Map

Finally you can use software to help you locate the Milky Way. In my case I use Stellarium. You can use it on PC/MAC/... (Free) or on your phone/tablet (paid). With GPS on, you'll easily find the Milky Way.

My photos are far from perfect because I was shooting near a village and I had a lot of light pollution. I've used light painting technique to paint my foreground to make the photos a little more interesting. I've also took some photos without stars, only with light painting.

Here are some of the photos :