This lady, all dressed in black, was one of the decorations in the Parc Jeanne d’Arc, in Québec City, for Halloween 2018.
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.
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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.
There are dogs that have a more difficult life than the dog above. For many years, this dog has accompanied his master who works as a coachman in Old Quebec.
This picture was taken with a hand held camera using a shutter speed of 1/60, which is very little considering the 200mm focal length. Normally, with 200mm, a photographer would have to use a speed of 1/200. But the light was not ideal and the ISO already at 3200. I stabilized my position as best as I could by using one of the Château Frontenac’s wall, which is solid enough!
The lens used was a Canon EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM mounted on a Canon 5DSR camera.
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The strange composition of the picture above was only possible because the lady was suspended in the air by a rope surrounding her body. The interaction between the two people is vertical: the young woman observes the man who looks somewhere else.
In the picture below, a woman stands in equilibrium upside down on one hand. Both pictures were taken during RDV Quebec 2017, while an impressive crowd was visiting Quebec City lower part of the town for the tall ships rendez-vous.
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…
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The crowd on the Plains of Abraham, in Quebec City, during the 2018 Festival d’été de Québec.
The Quebec Summer Festival draws huge crowds every year to each one of its shows. I decided to use the crowds to compose a photo in which there are only two subjects. In the foreground, one of the trees on the Plains of Abraham. I use the tree to create a diagonal that crosses the picture and, at the same time, helps balance the colours in the picture.
In the background, the crowd, without any other distraction. The people fill every available corner of the picture. They are the ones bringing the picture to life. It is also because of their presence every year that the Quebec Summer Festival is a success.
The picture was taken with a Canon 5DSR camera equipped with a Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS II USM lens. The focal length was 200mm and the shutter speed 1/250. Despite a 200mm focal, the people were still too far to be clear enough.
The goal being to crop the picture enough to enlarge the people, the ISO had to be quite low. It was set at 640. Once those priorities were established, the aperture could only be set at 5.0, which was good enough for the result I was trying to obtain. The 50.6 megapixels full frame sensor of the Canon 5DSR helped a lot.
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The 2018 Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec took place on September 7th on a beautiful day. The cyclists had to repeat a 12,6 km pattern across Old Quebec and the Battlefields Park sixteen times, which amounted to 201,6 km.
The circuit’s height difference from start to finish was 186 meters, for a total difference of 2976 meters. It is the Australian Michael Matthews who won the race during the final sprint.
Here are a few photos that I took with a Canon 5DSR camera. I used a Canon 14mm 2.8L ultra wide angle lens and a Canon 70-200 2.8L IS II USM telephoto lens.
The Grand Prix Cycliste Québec 2018. The cyclists are passing under the St. Jean Gate.
The Grand Prix Cycliste Québec 2018. Turning on St-Louis street.
The Grand Prix Cycliste Québec 2018. Turning on Côte de la Fabrique.
The Grand Prix Cycliste Québec 2018. The cyclists are passing under the St. Louis Gate.
The Grand Prix Cycliste Québec 2018, in front of Place d’Armes.
The Grand Prix Cycliste Québec 2018. The car from each team is never far behind the racers.
A few official photographers at the UCI World Tour Quebec 2018.
The Grand Prix Cycliste Québec 2018. The winner, Michael Matthews, from the Sunweb team, raises his fist.
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This picture of the Château Frontenac and Dufferin Terrace was taken during the Quebec Summer Festival 2018. From where I stood, near the Citadel, I could hear the crowd present on the Plains of Abraham during Patrice Michaud’s performance.
The picture was taken with a full frame Canon 5DSR camera equipped with a Canon EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM. The focal length was set at 70mm. As the sun was setting, an ISO set at 200 would have caused the moving persons to be blurred. It was thus necessary to set the ISO at 4000.
Working without a graduated filter to attenuate the background light, I had to correct the exposure at +1, otherwise the middle ground would have been too dark and it was the main subject of the picture. I then slightly reduced the clear tones of the sky with Photoshop for a more balanced result.
The focus was done manually while the camera was installed on a tripod. The aperture was limited to 4.5 to limit the exposure time so that a compromise could be found between an acceptable depth of field and the moving people. This allowed for a shutter speed of only 1/15 sec, even in a relatively low light.
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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!
The child with a man’s face. Terrasse Dufferin, Quebec City.
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.
The child with a man’s face (enlarged photo)
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!
Jeanne d’Arc and the snow geese. Parc Jeanne d’Arc, Quebec City, 2017.
When someone wants to do street photography, he must continually ask himself: “What don’t I see, but that is there? What do I take for granted but that would deserve a different approach?”
While I was heading to Old Quebec, I walked by the Jeanne d’Arc park. This park is known for its beautiful flowers and its huge statue of Jeanne d’Arc. But how could I get the statue without the flowers?
I was looking left and right when I finally looked straight up to see, in the background, hundreds of snow geese flying at high altitude and enroute for the Arctic. I had to very rapidly find a way to photograph the statue and the snow geese.
A few seconds later, the tip of Jeanne d’Arc’s sword was pointing towards the snow geese, making a link between the two subjects.
On a more theoretical note, an abstract diagonal line crossed the photo, starting from the front of the horse and going through the rider, the tip of the sword and following the two lines of geese, ending in the upper right corner of the picture.
The picture was taken with a Canon 5DSR full frame camera equipped with a Canon EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM.
