May 10 2012

I’ve been wanting to go and shoot the McTavish Reservoir pump house at night following shooting it during the day back on April 17.

Despite it raining, I decided tonight would be the night. I hadn’t had time to shoot anything all day and needed to go and shoot something anyway, so as the reservoir is close to home, this seemed like a good idea.

The only problem was when I got there I found a large marquee had been erected on Rutherford Park behind the Chateau styled pump house and obstructed the view from the location I had planned on taking a shot – Primarily, so as to include the Montreal skyline in the background. So I had to make a quick plan change and decided instead to shoot from the road – it turns out that only the front is lit at night anyway. The lighting cycles through different colors: blue, green and pink. Here is the pump house in a vivid shade of pink.

McTavish Reservoir pump house at night

I’m not a fan of rain, but I do like seeing the reflections on wet surfaces and was quite pleased how the pink came out in the road on this shot. This image was a 3 exposure merged HDR and I ended up having to mask in the sky and car light trails from the shorter of the exposures due to the amount of traffic that passed by while I was taking the shots. So it ended up being a more time sucking post processing job than I had wanted and still could do with further dodging and burning in places…but it’s late and I think this will suffice for the days pic.

Here it is in green from another angle. Actually, it’s probably more turquoise since in one of the 3 exposures the building was blue

McTavish Reservoir in Green

Since the reservoir is located on a hill, you actually get quite a good view of the city skyline. So I decided to make my way up the embankment and took the following shot. The old curved building in the foreground is the Redpath Museum that I plan to visit and grab a few dinosaur shots – if they allow photography.

Montreal night skyline from McTavish Reservoir

The last few pictures I managed to take before it started raining harder were around one of the McGill University buildings on Docteur Penfield.

In the front of one building is a statue of a pair of fighting rams. I wasn’t that happy with how the shot came out but did like the pink and green of the trees.

Fighting rams sculpture at McGill

I spotted a metal railing leading up to one of the McGill campus buildings that was lit along its’ length and decided to shoot through the center. A shot that was more of an experiment at the time, I actually thought came out quite well.

Lit Metal hand rail

To view images in gallery format, simply click on one of the images below.