Montreal In Pictures

Feb 17 2012

I set out with the objective of shooting Atwater Market, a farmers market located in the Saint Henry quarter.

I decided to walk there from home on the Plateau – quite a trek – thinking I may see something interesting along the way, unfortunately I saw nothing that peaked my interest. Anyway, having walked to Atwater and taking some pics around the market, I decided to take the Metro back and took some shots of the station. Since the shot of the day selected was from the Lionel Groulx station, we’ll start there before looking at the Market.

The shot for the day is a 3 exposure HDR. In fact all the shots of the station are HDR as I find the structure and architecture calls out for it. This is the first time I’ve tried shooting from the platform into a metro tunnel and was quite pleased with the result.

Lionel Groulx Metro – looking down the tunnel

A little background on Lionel Groulx metro station. Lionel Groulx is a transfer hub for the Orange and Green line on Montreal’s Metro system. The station opened on Sept 3rd 1978 as part of the extension of the Green line to Angrignon in the South West district of Montreal. Although built at the same time, the Orange line platforms were only opened when the extension to Place-Saint-Henri was completed in April 1980.

The station is named after Lionel Groulx (1878-1967), a Canadian Roman Catholic priest, historian and Quebec nationalist. There was recently a campaign on Facebook to have the station renamed to honor jazz musician Oscar Peterson who grew up in the nearby neighborhood of Little Burgundy.

For reference, here is a map of Montreal’s subway system operated by the STM (Société de Transport de Montréal). I hope one day to visit and photograph each station in the system – a big job, but less demanding than say covering the Tokyo, London, New York and many other subway networks. Mind you, Since I was stopped and questioned by a security guard concerning what my business was photographing the station, photographing all the stations in Montreal may not be a walk in the park.

Montreal Metro Map

The outside of Lionel Groulx metro is nothing to shout about and it didn’t help that some maintenance on the doors was taking place this morning. But with a little HDR treatment and some adjustment/toning in Topaz Adjust it makes for a more interesting image.

Entrance to Lionel Groulx Metro Station

The platforms and internal architecture are however fairly interesting. In 2009 it became the first existing station to be retrofitted to be fully wheelchair-accessible through the addition of elevators (seen in the first image below).

Lionel-Groulx Metro Station

Next up, Atwater Market. Designed by architect Ludger Lemieux, the market opened its doors in 1933. The market features a diverse range of merchants, caterers and specialty boutiques selling meats, fish, baked goods and fine foods all year round. In winter, stalls are located inside the art-deco facade, but during the summer local farmers set up their stalls around around the exterior.

The market is named after the street it is located on, which itself was named in 1871 after Edwin Atwater (1808–1874) who was a municipal alderman of the district of Saint-Antoine.

Atwater Market

The market is spread over 2 floors. The first floor has a central corridor running through it having a variety of butchers, fish mongers, bakers and specialty stores on both sides…really not a place to visit before having had breakfast ! On the ground floor (on the eastern side of the building) florists and fruit and veg vendors can be found.

Inside Atwater Market

I plan going back in the summer when there are many more sellers on the outside, plus I wasn’t over happy with the photo results from this trip…just as well I went home via the Metro.

Here are the images in gallery view.