Probably one of the most photographed homes bordering Saint Louis Square is the red house on the corner of rue du Square Saint Louis and avenue Henri-Julien. I thought it would make a nice composition having the red hydrant in the lower corner of the shot. Unfortunately the yellow marker was a bit too obtrusive. I think these are installed to enable firefighters to locate hydrants if buried in deep snow. I could have painted it out of the image, but instead decided to go the easy route and add some blur to lessen the imapact.

Red house on Carré Saint Louis
ISO 100 – 14mm – f5.6 – 1/60 sec (-2ev/0/+2ev)

Town houses on rue du Square Saint Louis
ISO 100 – 20mm – f5.6 – 1/60 sec (-2ev/0/+2ev)

Walking through the square I took afew shots of the groups of benches around the central fountain.

Benches on Carré Saint Louis
ISO 100 – 20mm – f5.6 – 1/250 sec

Another set of benches on the opposite side of the fountain. For this particular image I processed with a pseudo infrared look using Lightroom.

Benches on Carré Saint Louis
ISO 100 – 20mm – f5.6 – 1/250 sec

Having purchased the complete Topaz bundle of photo editing software the other day, I thought it was about time to give the Topaz Simplify plugin a whirl. I had another image of a set of benches and decided to give it a painted look.

For someone whose painting skills are at best limited to house decorating, I have to say I enjoy the flexibility that Simplify provides for transforming photographs into varied styles of painted art work, albeit without the satisfaction of having your paint dry on a canvas – at least there are no brushes to clean.

Benches on Carré Saint Louis with paint effect
ISO 100 – 20mm – f5.6 – 1/60 sec

Here is a before/after view that shows the transformation…

The last pic for today is of the central fountain. I had taken the shot, shooting into the direction of the sun to get a washed out look, but during processing I opted to tweak it in Topaz B&W Effects and attempt to give it a vintage look. B&W Effects also comes with a nice selection of borders. Although I don’t tend to add borders on my images, these could come in handy for some printing projects.

Carré Saint Louis vintage look
ISO 100 – 10mm – f5.6 – 1/250 sec

Thanks for stopping by. Until next time.

– Martin

Montréal in Pictures

Your virtual guide in and around Montréal

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