I was lacking inspiration on what to photograph today and ended up taking a few shots around the Illuminated Crowd sculpture by Raymond Mason on avenue McGill College.
I’ve photographed this popular public art a couple of times in the past (see 19 March 2013 and 3 November 2012).
You may have seen that on November 6 I posted about the Mundus art installations (the inspiration of Alison Tett) that use architecture to create astronomical sightlines. One of the 4 installations – Cygnus – is located behind the Illuminated Crowd and provides background on the constellation Cygnus, its largest star Deneb, the Milky Way, and Cygnus X-1, a presumed black hole. You can view the constellation between June and October by looking directly upward from the Cygnus installation. I wanted to take a shot of the granite slab, but it was covered with salt sediment and not easy to read, so I just went for a wide shot to show the location of the marker (in the forefground). Maybe next year I will try to shoot the constellation itself from this spot.
For fun and a little experimentation, I exported the above shot into Topaz B&W Effects to add a toned poster effect. I love toned poster images and was happy to find that B&W effects make the transition a pretty easy process. I’ve been wanting to create some more toned poster style tshirts, so this will come in handy.
The Christmas decoration on the building across the street was nicely aligned with the man raising his hand. After cropping tight, I added a zoom effect with Topaz Lens Effects.
Thanks for stopping by. Until next time.
– Martin
Montréal in Pictures
Your virtual guide in and around Montréal