This young man found a quiet spot on the St-Jean Gate in Old Quebec. On the other side of the wall, at Place d’Youville, a band plays during the Quebec Summer Festival.
Click on the link for other photos of Québec City and île d’Orléans in Summer on my blog.
For this picture of the Kelowna Yacht Club, in British Columbia, I was more interested in capturing the general atmosphere rather than the whole yacht club with all its boats and installations.
The words Kelowna Yacht Club and the boats being obvious in the midground, there was no need to add more details. It was nonetheless important to position the tent in the superior right corner of the picture since the name of the yacht club was showing and it was well lighted.
The photographic composition includes elements of the surrounding natural environment that made Kelowna’s reputation. The boats are framed between the rocks and the plants in the foreground while the mountains are visible in the background.
In order to achieve a good photo at this time of the day, a tripod was necessary. It was nonetheless mandatory to limit the exposure time due to the winds, in order to avoid a blurred picture. The shutter speed was limited to 3.2 seconds and the ISO adjusted to 320 to limit the photographic grain. An aperture set at 13 allowed a sufficient depth of field to offer a sharp image.
A Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM lens mounted on a full frame Canon 5DSR was used for the picture. The focal was limited to 32mm. The visibility was somewhat limited due to the active forest fires in the region, but the additional condensation nucleis in the air helped to obtain beautiful colors in the sky.
For other pictures of Canada, click on the following links in my blog:
The boy tests the water temperature before running across the water jets located beside Quebec City’s City Hall.
The light in the water jets required an exposure correction of + 1/3. The shutter speed was set at 1/80 which allowed to see the boy clearly at a time when he was not moving too much. This shutter speed also allowed to visualize the water jets effects while limiting the ISO to 1250, even with such a low light. The aperture was only 6.3, just enough for what had to be photographed.
The picture was taken with a Canon 5DSR full frame camera equipped with a Canon EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens.
Click on the link for more on street photography on my blog.
The light is always interesting when a picture is taken just before the nightime or the sunrise. The scenery above was captured in Old Quebec during Summer 2018. The use of a lens requiring very little light, like the Canon EF85mm f/1.2L USM mounted on a Canon 5DSR made the task easier.
I wanted to ensure that the people were not mere shadows and that the water effects in the fountains were visible. The shutter speed was adjusted to 1/50 and the ISO set at 6400. The aperture was limited to 4.5 to respect the shutter speed. Photography is always a matter of compromise…
For other pictures of Quebec City, click on the following links of my blog :
So far, this winter has been especially cold in Quebec City. There have been several weeks where the temperature stayed below -20 C. The STQ ferries, property of the Government of Quebec, must navigate the ice covered St. Lawrence Seaway between Lévis and Quebec City.
The ferries Alphonse-Desjardins and Lomer-Gouin, carrying cars and passengers between the two cities, must sometimes completely cancel the service. On three occasions so far, a ferry stayed stuck while trying to cross the ice covered seaway. The passengers had to wait patiently up to four hours for a crossing that normally takes ten minutes.
The picture below was taken from Old Quebec. In the foreground stands the “Le Vendôme” restaurant, which has been for sale for years now. In the distance, a ferry makes its way through ice towards Quebec City.
Ocean’s tugboats are also working on the seaway, regardless of the temperature. The picture below shows one of those tugboats enroute to the Jean-Gaulin refinery to help an oil tanker.
The pictures in this article were taken on January 7th 2018 with a Canon 5DSR equipped with a Canon EF 85 mm f/1.2L II USM. The temperature was -18 C.
The next day, a man who had fallen in the icy waters of the St. Lawrence Seaway was luckily spotted by one of the passengers who was standing on the Lomer-Gouin ferry heading to Quebec City. The man suffering from severe hypothermia was saved by the Government of Quebec STQ staff (Société des traversiers). Here is the link to TVA news (in French): Une personne tombe dans le fleuve Saint-Laurent à Québec.
The cold temperature and winds did not stop the Château Frontenac canoeists from training on the icy seaway in preparation for the Quebec Carnival competition. This year, the race will be held on February 4th. The Association des coureurs en canots à glace du Québec (Ice canoeists Association of Quebec) recently faced a tragedy went they lost one of their members in a training session during very harsh weather conditions.
Here is the link to Radio-Canada news (in French): http://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1072906/operation-sauvetage-embarcation-fleuve-saint-laurent
The picture above was taken during summer 2016 in the Vancouver harbour, in British Columbia. I chose that time of the day to take the picture since the light was at its best.
The calm winds allowed for a better reflection in the water. The rain, which had been falling almost all day, favored the presence of low clouds which eventually hid the mountains. It is nonetheless possible to still see part of the mountains at the top of the picture.
I used a Canon 5DSR full frame camera equipped with a Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS II USM telephoto lens. The aperture was set at F9 in order to optimize the photo’s sharpness.
The bulk carrier ship in the foreground is the Corona Frontier. It sails under the japanese flag and has its home port in Kobe. The vessel was built in 2000. The Corona Frontier’s draught is 13.7 meters and its gross tonnage is 48032 tons.
Click on the link for more photos of Canada on my blog.
The Quebec Bridge, the longest cantilever type bridge in the world, celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2017. For the occasion, several activities were organized in Quebec on September 23rd 2017, culminating with fireworks near the bridge.
Several workers lost their live while attempting to build the bridge. A Wikipedia article resumes its history: The Quebec Bridge
In 2017, the safety issue was brought back in the news. This time it was about the lack of maintenance that favored an increasing amount of rust on the metallic structure.
The funds that would allow to paint the bridge on a regular basis seems hard to find. The bridge owner, the Canadian National Railway Company, and the different levels of government are attempting to find a solution that would be acceptable for all. This discussion has been going on for years. While the bridge holds on, everything is fine.
About the photography
During the fireworks several boats equipped with an additional lighting system approached the bridge.
It was impossible to get really sharp shots of the boats since they were constantly moving due to the strong current of the St. Lawrence Seaway.
The fireworks lasted about thirty minutes and attracted a huge crowd, both along the St.Lawrence Seaway and on the higher grounds of both Lévis and Quebec City.
Frequent adjustments of the camera’s aperture and ISO were needed since it is always very demanding for a camera to deal with sudden burst of lights appearing in the darkness. It was necessary to limit the exposure time in order to avoid an accumulation of blurred light trails.
The pictures were taken with a Canon 5DSR full frame camera mounted on a tripod. A Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM was used to capture the fireworks.
Click on the link for other photos taken in Autumn on my blog.
The picture above shows the Harlequin, a bulk carrier built in 2012 that has a 9.7 meter draught. It sails under the Cyprus convenience flag. On June 18th 2017, when the photo was taken, it was in front of the Jean Gaulin refinery in Lévis, Quebec, and was about to cross the Atlantic heading to Rouen, France. The Jean Gaulin refinery is Quebec’s largest refinery and ranks second in Canada when it comes to refining crude oil.
The photo was taken at 21:07, just before nightime. Since I was positioned on the highest floor of the Quai des Cageux wooden tower, there were constant vibrations associated with people going up and down the stairs. The tower’s movement combined with a moving vessel made the use of of tripod totally useless. It was thus necessary to make a handheld photo, which seriously increased the risk of a blurred picture considering the lack of light.
A Canon EF 85mm f/1.2 II USM fixed lens installed on a Canon 5DSR full frame camera helped to make a successful shot. The fact that this kind of lens requires very little light increases the photographer’s margin of manoeuver. It would obviously have been possible to increase the ISO to 6000 and more to compensate for the poor lighting, but that would have degraded the photo’s quality. The ISO was thus limited to 2000, with a shutter speed of 1/200 sec and a 1.6 aperture.
In order to limit the risk of a blurred picture, it was necessary to follow the movement of the ship with the camera. The closer one gets to immobilizing the ship in the viewfinder, the better the chances of a defined photo.
Since the ship was farther than it appears on the picture above, some cropping was mandatory to bring the vessel to a decent size. If the ISO had been too elevated to start with, the ensuing photographic grain would have been too big after the cropping and the quality of the picture would have suffered. With an ISO limited to 2000, the image kept a decent definition.
For other pictures of ships on my website, click on the following link : Ship photography.
Here is a night picture that speaks volume about the ambiance that generally prevails in Quebec City. Wherever he walks, the photographer will notice citizen and tourists admiring the town.
The photo was captured with a Canon 5D MKII full-frame camera equipped with a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 fixed lens. This kind of maximal aperture allows to take pictures at this time of the day without the need of a tripod and without grossly increasing the ISO, thus protecting the picture’s quality. The use of a tripod is always giving better results, but for the occasions where the photographer does not have one with him, the maximal aperture of 1.4 (or even better 1.2 for the lucky ones) can save the day.
The stars surrounding the city lights do not result from using a special photography equipment. Instead, they are produced by the multiple elements present in the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 fixed lens. Since every lenses available on the market are not of equal quality, some lenses naturally offer a much nicer bokeh than others.
It is quite difficult to obtain something else than human silhouettes when the light is so weak. The lower third of the image also proves to be a problem for the camera, as the luminosity created by the streetlights is much more intense. Nonetheless, it was not too difficult to correct the contrasts using an image editing software, since the photo was taken using RAW files.
For other photos on the province of Quebec and also Quebec City, click on the following links from my blog:
The picture above was taken on Grande-Allée in Quebec City during the 2017 Quebec City Carnival. I used a full-frame Canon 5DSR camera equipped with a Canon 14mm f/2.8 L wide-angle lens. There was enough light to be able to set the focus on « automatic ». I had to slightly correct the exposure to improve the visibility of the blue light reflecting on the sidewalk.
For other photos on the province of Quebec and also Quebec City, click on the following links from my blog: