POW, BANG, BRRRR

Those of you out there who were passing by this page over the summer are well aware of the fact that I enjoy taking photographs of fireworks.  Take a minute and check out some of the shots I took this summer by visiting my pages here, here, here, here, and here.  Before you complain about having to click on all of those links, count yourself as being lucky.  There would have been three more links to click had it not been for the fact that I was prevented from going out three times over the summer because of rain.  Getting back on track, in addition to the fireworks competition in the summer, there's also the Telus Fire On Ice, which takes place every Saturday night during the month of December (and the first week of January) down at the Old Port of Montreal.  I was tempted to go last year, but never actually made it down to the site.  This year, the event began last week but we were in the middle of a rather cold spell that saw the temperature drop into the -20's C with the wind.  The temperature was a little bit better this week, though there was still a fairly strong wind and it was very cloudy.  Those weren't my biggest problems.  I was more concerned about where I was going to place myself in order to get a good view of the show.  I headed down to the site early, and along with My Lovely Assistant, we walked around the area in the hopes of finding a good spot.  After a few minutes of being frustrated by obstructed views, unwanted light posts and poorly planted trees, My Lovely Assistant had a flash of brilliance.  She noticed a pile of snow that was sitting just off of the walkway and would, in theory, provide me with a nice elevated vantage point in order to capture the shots I was looking for.  She climbed the mountain rather easily while I followed, behind, a little bit concerned that I would rather quickly sink to the bottom of the snowy hill and find myself buried until Spring.  Lots of people were passing by, and a few were giving us some funny looks, as would be expected when seeing a person like myself standing about six feet off the ground on top of a mountain of snow.  The the show began, and horror of horrors, my location was terrible.  The wind was blowing the fireworks a little bit more to the right than I had thought and so it was time to scramble.  I tried to grab a few shots, and then with about half of the show complete, I scurried down the hill and took up a new location further up the sidewalk and away from the site. For those of you wondering at home, the first and fourth photographs you see here were taken from the hill while the other four were taken on the sidewalk.  The first photograph was taken at f/13, 5sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/13, 9sec, ISO 100 at 24mm and the third photograph was taken at f/13, 7 sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  Here are the rest of the photographs that I took.

f9, 7sec, ISO 100 at 27mm

f/13, 6sec, ISO 100 at 24mm

f/13, 5sec, ISO 100 at 24mm

It was a fun outing.  I'll try and get down to the site one more time before the event comes to an end.  I'd definitely like to find a better spot to shoot from, so if anyone has any ideas, feel free to let me know.