Montreal In Pictures

November 13 2012

I had planned on going and shooting some of the festive decorations that have recently started to appear on some of the office towers downtown, but the first 2 were not lit when I got there. So, since it was almost rush hour, I made a quick diversion to rue University to shoot some long exposures of the commuter traffic heading out of town.

Rue University is a great location for shooting car trails at night, particularly when standing at the center of University at the cross street of rue de la Gauchetière looking south. You have the iconic Farine Five Roses neon sign in the distance and the central illuminated pillars running down the center of the street.

With the railway and bus station being nearby you also get a lot of pedestrians crossing the street. I did try to shoot the blur of people as they rushed to catch their trains and buses, but none of my attempts captured the look I wanted, so that will be for another day.

I did manage to get a few shots of car trail lights though.

Evening rush hour on rue University
ISO 100 – 66mm – f5.3 – 6 sec

Evening rush hour on rue University
ISO 100 – 105mm – f5.6 – 10 sec

Evening rush hour on rue University
ISO 100 – 52mm – f5 – 6 sec

I attempted to get a little artsy shooting the central pillars close up with a wide angle lens and went for a blurred look. I’ve recently being checking out some ‘blurrist’ groups on Flickr and would love to be able to get any where near the quality and feel of some of the photographers images I’ve seen, but you have to start somewhere.

Rue University central pillars
ISO 100 – 16mm – f6.7 – 1.5 sec

Continuing with my artsy mood, here is a shot of the tallest building in Montreal – 1000 de la Gauchetière seen from the grassy area near the corner of rue University and rue Notre Dame. Unfortunately I couldn’t get an angle that omitted the large (and very bright) street lamps which produced a lot of lens flare, but I quite liked the result after a bit of playing around in Lightroom.