Montreal In Pictures

Feb 28 2012

Another gorgeous day in Montreal, so I headed down to the Old Port.

For the photo of the day, I took a 3 exposure shot from the underside of one of the parasols on the new urban beach that had icicles hanging from one side.

Parasol awaiting the return of summer

Since the sky was clear blue, I decided to convert to black and white, spot color the parasol and darken the sky to black using a combination of tools in Lightroom and Topaz Adjust. Here is the original shot taken at average exposure.

Untreated parasol

While down on the urban beach, I couldn’t resist grabbing another shot of the boats moored on the Saint Lawrence beneath the Jacques-Cartier bridge.

Boats underneath the Jacques Cartier bridge

On Place Jacques-Cartier there are 3 ice sculptures remaining from the Montreal en Lumiere festival that ended last weekend. I know the player in the background of the following picture is goaltender Carey Price, but not certain who the player in the front is. In any case, if the weather warms up, these guys will be moving quicker than the real team is skating at the moment.

Montreal ice hockey players on ice

Montreal Canadiens logo in ice

Just to the side of the hockey sculptures is rue Saint Amable. It’s pretty quiet this time of year, but in the summer is lined by artists selling their works – hence the banner reading rue des Artistes.

Rue Saint Amable AKA rue des Artistes

Rue Saint Amable

While I was down in the old port, I headed over to the Quai Jacques Cartier to check up on how the preparations were coming along on erecting The Cirque du Soleil big top for the forthcoming Amaluna show. The rear tent is now up and they were winching the masts for the main tent arena into place.

Cirque du Soleil – raising the big top

There’s a nice old fire escape adjacent to an outdoor parking lot on rue Saint Jacques and rue Saint Jean.

Old fire escape

Looking from the car park back towards rue Notre Dame, you get a great view of 3 original Montreal buildings dating from the late 1800’s.

And then there were 3

The red building on the right is the former Sun Life building. Built in 1889 it was home to Sun Life until 1913, when the company moved to the first stage of the newer and much grander building on Dorchester Square. In the center is the Lewis building (built 1912/13) and on the far left is the C. P. R. Telegraph building (1900/01).

Looking down rue Saint Jean is the side of the LHotel – the hotel with the LOVE sculpture at the entrance which I covered in the post on Valentines day.

Side of the LHotel

On the corner of rue Saint Paul and rue Saint Dizier is a wonderful bronze sculpture called The Chuchoteuses (The Whisperers) by Quebec born artist Rose-Aimee Belanger.