Eric Mahannah Photography: Montreal High Lights Festival

Monday 2 March 2015

Montreal High Lights Festival

Montreal seems at times to be the city that can find a reason to have a festival for just about anything. It's cold and dark in February? Why not create a Festival of Lights? That's exactly what they did. On Saturday, the 16th annual Montréal en Lumière came to an end. I finally made my way to the site this year and had a little fun. I always like taking long exposure photographs and the mention of a ferris wheel had me licking my chops. This being my first time to the festival, I wasn't exactly aware of how the grounds would be laid out. Knowing a little bit about how the buildings are located on the street, I had a plan on where I was hoping to place

myself, but that location was thrown out the window as soon as I arrived and saw that the view I was hoping for would be blocked by a tower that had been built for part of a zip-line ride. I noticed a little temporary pedestrian bridge that had been built for the event and thought it would be a good second choice. Luckily, I visited the festival around supper time on a Wednesday night, so there weren't that many people around for me to disturb with my tripod. I took several photographs over the next few minutes, always watching the ferris wheel as the lights on the ride would form all kinds of interesting designs. Before packing up and heading for home, I decided to wander around the site a little bit and found another location that allowed me to photograph the ferris wheel with some of the lit up buildings in the background. It was a pretty fun little outing. The photographs here are kind of repetitive, but I really like all of the patterns that show up in the wheel. The first photograph was taken at f/8, 3sec, ISO 100 at 24mm. The second photograph was taken at f/18, 4sec, ISO 100 at 55mm. Here are a couple more photographs I took that night.