American Firepower

A recent newspaper article in Montreal made mention of how a study came to the conclusion that there needed to be fewer parking spaces in the city.  Whoever it was who came to this conclusion obviously didn't try to find a spot to park their car on a Saturday night in Old Montreal.  The forecast called for the possibility of showers on Saturday night, so rather than bike across the river like My Lovely Assistant and I have done in the past, I figured driving in would be the better option.  Especially since I didn't really want to expose my equipment to a good soaking if I could avoid it.  It was a good plan in theory, not so much in practice.  We left a little bit later than I had intended, around 7:00PM, but I figured everything would still be okay because I knew of a little place where I'd be sure to find a spot.  Sadly, that spot has been turned into a bicycle path for the summer, and most of my other secret spots have fallen victim to construction zones.  So, we ended up driving around Old Montreal for about an hour and a half hoping to find a parking spot.  At around 8:30PM, I had had enough of driving and we actually drove over the bridge back home, parked the car and did what we probably should have done from the beginning, we took the Metro.  We ended up getting to the site much later than I had planned, but I still managed to get a spot that I wanted.  As you can tell from the photographs, I wanted to place myself on the walking path down by the Old Port that leads to the Clock Tower.  I was hoping that some of the walking path would remain visible, but instead what I got was a sea of humanity with the odd umbrella thrown in for fun when it began to rain a little bit.  One thing that the rain, and the fact that the lights on the clock tower turned off about half-way through the show, forced me to do was to play a bit with my lens.  I recomposed my shot so that I was photographing only the bridge and the fireworks after the lights on the tower went out, and then quickly went back to my original set-up when the lights came back on.  However, I did miss my composition after the lights came back on originally.  As you can see in the third photograph, I ended up pointing my lens a little higher than planned and ended up losing the reflection of the fireworks in the water.  Though I still like the photograph enough to put up here on the page.  The first photograph was taken at f/16, 14sec, ISO 100 at 43mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/16, 10sec, ISO 100 at 35mm.  The third photograph was taken at f/16, 10sec, ISO 100 at 42mm and the fourth photograph was taken at f/16, 12sec, ISO 100 at 35mm.  Here are a few more photographs I took during the show.

f/16, 8sec, ISO 100 at 68mm

f/16, 5sec, ISO 100 at 43mm

After all of that story telling, I forgot to mention that it was the turn of the United States of America to light up the sky, and that job fell to the folks at Rozzie's Famous Fireworks of Loveland, Ohio.  This was their sixth appearance here in Montreal, and twice they've left with Jupiter Awards.  This was another strong showing.