Tag: Côte de la Montagne

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Photos of Quebec

HDR Photography of the Château Frontenac at Christmas

HDR picture of the Château Frontenac at Christmas 2025 from Côte de la Montagne in Quebec City.
HDR picture of the Château Frontenac at Christmas 2025 from Côte de la Montagne in Quebec City.

During the holiday season, the Château Frontenac is decked out in red and green. For an interesting effect, try taking a picture of the castle’s main tower from Côte de la Montagne. To do this, you have to point the camera upward, but all the lines that are normally vertical become slanted.

Photographic Technique

To correct this effect and restore the architectural lines to near verticality, some computer work is necessary. In a few minutes, after cropping and changing the photographic plane, the photo regains the natural appearance that the eye observes when climbing Côte de la Montagne.

HDR photo of the Château Frontenac and surroundings in winter in Quebec City.
HDR photo of the Château Frontenac and surroundings in winter in Quebec City.

The photo above shows another beautiful view of the Château Frontenac. In the middle of the tourist season, passersby in Old Quebec are plentiful in front of the camera lens. Long exposure times mean that several “ghosts” will appear to be moving around when taking nighttime photographs.

How can you avoid these “ghosts” as much as possible? Timing is important. Once the blue hour has passed, complete darkness provides uniform lighting. This allows you to choose a moment when no one is passing by the camera when taking each shot to achieve the HDR effect. Five shots with different apertures will give you the desired HDR result. I use a tripod and a Canon EF 11-24mm f/4L USM wide-angle lens mounted on a Canon 5DSR full-frame camera.

There is only one person very close to the camera lens during the entire session. I remove her from the HDR photo. Since she was working with a tripod, she moved very little during my five shots, which allowed the correction tool in the digital processing software to teleport her to a parallel universe.

Click on the link for more photos of Quebec City on my blog.

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Photos of Quebec

Tudor, Alaphilippe and the Grand Prix cycliste de Québec 2025.

Cyclists on côte de la Montagne at the Grand Prix cycliste de Québec 2025
Cyclists on côte de la Montagne at the Grand Prix cycliste de Québec 2025

Julian Alaphilippe of the Swiss cycling team Tudor is the winner of the Grand Prix cycliste de Québec 2025

Now that we know the winner, here are seven photos of Julian Alaphilippe, the Tudor team, Marion Rousse (the winner’s partner), Tadej Pogacar and Pavel Sivakov.

The Tudor team and Alaphilippe on côte de la Montagne at the GPC Québec 2025
The Tudor team and Alaphilippe on côte de la Montagne at the GPC Québec 2025

The 216-kilometer race took place between https://www.quebec-cite.com/en/old-quebec-city Old Quebec, the Plains of Abraham, the Montcalm neighborhood, and Champlain Boulevard. Above, cyclists climb Côte de la Montagne, which has an average gradient of 9% over 600 meters, but with a steep section reaching 13%.

Below, a photo of the main peloton with the Château Frontenac in the background.

View of the Château Frontenac during the GPC Québec 2025
View of the Château Frontenac during the GPC Québec 2025

Near the Château Frontenac, I take the opportunity to snap a photo of Tadej Pogacar and Julian Alaphilippe, two of the most famous names in the race.

Pogacar and Alaphilippe the winner of the GPC Québec race 2025
Pogacar and Alaphilippe the winner of the GPC Québec race 2025
The Tudor cyclist team opens the way for Alaphilippe at the GPC Québec 2025
The Tudor cyclist team opens the way for Alaphilippe at the GPC Québec 2025

On Rue Saint-Louis, the young Swiss Tudor team worked to save Julian Alaphilippe’s efforts. Below, Julian Alaphilippe after his victory. In the background are Tadej Pogacar and Pavel Sivakov of the UAE team. The latter finished two seconds behind Alaphilippe, while Alberto Bettiol of the XDS Astana Team took third place, four seconds behind.

Pogacar was well positioned, but at the end of the race, the group he was riding with refused to take turns at the front. So, he decided to slow down and watch someone else win.

Alaphilippe, Pogacar and Sivakov after the Grand Prix cycliste de Québec 2025
Alaphilippe, Pogacar and Sivakov after the Grand Prix cycliste de Québec 2025

Marion Rousse, former French champion and actual director of the Women’s Tour de France, was working as an analyst at the GPC in Quebec City. She left her post for a few minutes to congratulate her partner, Julian Alaphilippe. She can be seen in the photo below walking towards the Tudor team.

Marion Rousse arrives to congratulate Julian Alaphilippe at the GP cycliste de Québec 2025
Marion Rousse arrives to congratulate Julian Alaphilippe at the GP cycliste de Québec 2025

It was once again an exciting race, held for the fourteenth consecutive year under sunny skies and ideal temperatures. Every year, more and more cycling enthusiasts come to watch this UCI World Tour race. The same is true for the race in Montreal.

Here is the link for all the results of the Quebec City race.

Click on the link for more photos of the province of Québec on my blog.

Categories
Photos of Quebec

Château Frontenac and the winter wonderland of Old Quebec

Old Quebec in winter seen from Parc Montmorency in 2025
Old Quebec in winter seen from Parc Montmorency in 2025

It’s time for another winter outing in Old Quebec. The night photography session will be devoted to architecture.

The temperature is about -14 C and the winds are blowing at 15 km/h. Without gloves in order to manipulate the little buttons on the camera, the skin feels -22 C. A regular break is essential to thaw out the fingers!

I took the photo from Parc Montmorency, just up the côte de la Montagne. This historic site is a major tourist attraction in Quebec City. Louis Hébert, Canada‘s first farmer, cultivated the land here on his arrival in New France. It’s important to understand, however, that the natives knew about farming and cultivated the soil long before the arrival of the French settlers.

On the left is a sculpture of Sir Georges-Étienne Cartier, one of the Fathers of Confederation. The Château Frontenac and Price Building are also visible in the distance. In the foreground is a building that has changed function many times. It was originally the first Episcopal Palace.

Photography technique

For this shot, I planted my tripod in 40 centimetres of snow. I used a Canon 5 DSr camera equipped with a Canon EF 11-24 mm F/4L USM ultra wide-angle  zoom lens. I could have set the ISO to 200 thanks to the stability of the tripod, but the wind demanded a faster result due to possible vibrations. ISO and shutter speed are therefore dictated by ambient weather conditions rather than low light.

Click on the link for more photos of Quebec City and Île d’Orléans in winter on my blog.

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Photos of Canada Photos of Quebec

Old Quebec in photos (2)

Old Quebec heading to St-Paul street.
Old Quebec heading to St-Paul street.

Old meets new in this photo of Old Quebec. On the right, the headquarters of the Norplex group, real estate developer. This is the former Canadian Bank of Commerce building, designed in 1914 by architect V. D. Horsburgh. The rounded shape is reminiscent of the Bank of England’s Tivoli.

In the foreground, the sculpture-fountain La Vivrière, a more modern creation inaugurated in 1995 on Place de la FAO to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the FAO in Quebec City in 1945, under the aegis of Lester B. Pearson.

In terms of photographic composition, the sculpted waves in the foreground gradually direct the viewer’s eye towards the main building at the top right of the photo. The rounded columns are only straight thanks to the use of Canon’s ultra-wide-angle EF 11-24mm F/4L lens.

Quiet evening in Old Quebec during Summer 2024
Quiet evening in Old Quebec during Summer 2024

Above, a view of the newly restored Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville. In the distance, the tower of the Price building. Rotating spotlights create moving shadows for the couple in the foreground.  

Old Quebec buildings seen from Côte de la Montagne, 2024.
Old Quebec buildings seen from Côte de la Montagne, 2024.

Above, a five-shot HDR photo of buildings in Old Quebec. In the foreground, a wall stands at the intersection of Port Dauphin and Côte-de-la-Montagne streets. In the middle ground, we see the shops and buildings on rue De Buade. In the background, the Price Building, the only skyscraper permitted in Old Quebec.

Click on the link for more photos of Quebec City and Île d’Orléans in summer on my blog.

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Street photography

A Guay crane at work in Old Québec.

This is what a Demag AC435 all-terrain telescopic crane looked like before it received the colors of the Quebec company “Grues Guay“:

Demag AC 435 crane
Demag AC 435 crane

This all-terrain crane was recently at work in Old Quebec, on the Côte de la Montagne. The coast has a fairly steep slope and it was necessary to create an artificial horizontal surface using pieces of wood to make the work safe.

Stabilization of a Guay crane at work.
Stabilization of a Guay crane at work.

The crane operator used a stepladder to get in and out of his vehicle as needed:

Stepladder provided for the Guay crane's driver at work in Old Québec.
Stepladder provided for the Guay crane’s driver at work in Old Québec.

So this gave the following result, once the crane was at work:

All-terrain Demag AC 435 crane at work in Old Québec
All-terrain Demag AC 435 crane at work in Old Québec

With the telescopic arm fully extended:

All-terrain Demag AC 435 crane from Guay at work in Old Québec in 2021.
All-terrain Demag AC 435 crane from Guay at work in Old Québec in 2021.

In the last photo below, you can see a person in a basket that is suspended at the end of the telescopic arm, confident that the tens of thousands of pounds of counterweight will keep the crane from tipping over. The calculation had to be very precise. Everything had to remain stable throughout the day! And since the work on the building lasted several days, the same operation had to be repeated every morning …

Guay crane at work in Old Québec on Côte de la Montagne in 2021.
Guay crane at work in Old Québec on Côte de la Montagne in 2021.

Click for more pictures of Québec City in summer on my blog.