I had planned to head out to île Sainte-Hélène late this afternoon to get some shots of the Biosphére illuminated, but with the temperature being -20 degrees and dropping, I decided to stay in the warm and cook a cassoulet instead. Don’t worry, I’m not posting pictures of me slaving over the stove 😉
Thankfully I had a few pictures of the cross on Mount Royal that I shot on Wednesday night. I have shared some pics of the cross at night before, but that was in early November 2012 and without snow. Since some of my sales come from stock imagery, it’s always good to have multiple shots of the same subject at different times, weather conditions etc…so my apologies if I sometimes cover the same subject matter.
Mount Royal cross
ISO 280 – 10mm – f13 – 1/3 sec
I would have liked that the lights on the cross had a little bit of a star burst, but the f13 setting failed to give the result I had wanted. I decided to give the Topaz Star Effects a try and quite liked the outcome. For the moon I thought the star effect was a bit too much and so deleted the star burst and added a sun flare effect instead. For just $29.99, the Star Effects package provides quite a few interesting effects and lots of control on the star burst.
Mount Royal cross with star effect
Mount Royal cross
ISO 280 – 10mm – f9 – 1/13 sec
I wanted to get a shot of the cross with a close up of the moon. Unfortunately the moon was too high in the sky to be able to shoot at a long zoom length and include the cross in the frame. The longest I could effectively manage was at 95mm. I tried various settings trying not to overexpose the moon and lights on the cross, while still having some surrounding detail be exposed. I gave up after a while, with this being my best attempt but without having any detail other than the moon and lights – not exactly what I wanted.
Mount Royal cross with moon
ISO 400 – 95mm – f11 – 1/100 sec
So I ended up going for a more overexposed moon shot which actually produced a much more interesting image…
Mount Royal cross with moon
ISO 400 – 70mm – f9 – 1 sec
For the next image, I turned to Topaz B&W Effects to add a vintage look together with adding a border…
Mount Royal cross vintage
ISO 280 – 10mm – f13 – 1/3 sec
Another shot using B&W Effects, this time using a close up of the cross and adding a toned poster effect.
Mount Royal cross tone poster
ISO 280 – 11.5mm – f9 – 1/10 sec
One final image for today. On my way up Mount Royal the sun was setting and I took a shot through the trees. I liked the pink light and the silver birches in the snow. I tried a couple of different looks in processing and liked the painted version (using Topaz Simplify).
Silver birch at sunset
ISO 100 – 70mm – f4.5 – 1/80 sec
Thanks for stopping by. Have a great weekend !
– Martin
Montréal in Pictures
Your virtual guide in and around Montréal
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