Ephemeral creations are part of the constantly changing portrait of Old Quebec. The public art installations are visible only for a few weeks at a time. The photography lover must stroll through numerous areas of the city in order to find and immortalize an installation before it definitely disappears!
The Halloween is celebrated during the month of October in the parc Jeanne d’Arc, in Quebec City. Several interesting sceneries are presented every year to the public. Photographers always find something interesting to bring back from their visit in the park. In late afternoon or during the evening, the lower light intensity adds to the dramatic atmosphere.
The picture above was slightly desaturated using Photoshop. The goal was to restore the sinister aspect of the lady and the emotion felt by a visitor standing in the park.
For other pictures of Quebec City, click on the following links of my blog :
In Canada, we cannot take the picture of someone who is the main subject unless we have obtained her permission. This is even more important with a child, where the authorization of the parents is required. But in the case of the picture below, it is different: it is a child whose face seems to belong to somebody else!
I took this picture and enlarged it in the camera to understand what I was seeing. I realized that the child was holding the image of an adult man directly in front of his face.
There was a group of adults that were standing nearby. One of the man called the child, who rapidly stepped down from the statue. They told me that the picture held by the child represents the sensei of a karate club that came all the way from British-Columbia for a national competition of Shotokan style karate being held at Laval University in Quebec City. The mystery was solved!
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Around 1989-1990, there was in Iqaluit, on Baffin Island, a very quiet Inuit living in the same eight floor building as I did. He spent his free time reading while walking, lost in his thoughts like a priest. When we crossed each other on the street, we always exchanged polite greetings.
One evening, as I was about to leave my apartment to go to work the night shift at the Transport Canada flight service station (FSS), I saw in the corridor a man who was really going through an anger crisis, shouting and using all his determination to destroy a wall with a hammer. He was really going at it and the work was moving ahead very well…
I recognized that person that I was greeting almost on a daily basis and I was now facing a problem: To go work at the FSS station, I had to walk very close to him, since there was no other issue out of the building. Was he in such a crisis that he would not remember me?
I got closer and took the chance to pass just behind him. He suddenly stopped hitting the wall, turned around with the hammer in his hand and looked at me. Then he calmly said, like the gentlemen that he usually was: “Good evening!” I replied then walked about ten meters toward the exit before I heard him shout and hit the wall again.
The least I can say is that, some nights, you could witness the most bizarre situations. And when that was preceding a night shift, in an isolated Arctic post, you sometimes had the feeling to be living in a surreal world.
I do not know how the story ended. The next morning, back from the night shift, I entered a building where everything was peaceful. The only trace left by the man in crisis was a damaged wall. Very soon, somebody would come and repair the wall and that event would rapidly be erased from memories.
For more real life stories as a FSS in Iqaluit, click on the following link: Flight service specialist (FSS) in Iqaluit