Lucky Star

Well, it's been a fun month.  The 2015 L’International des Feux Loto-Québec came to an end on Saturday night, and if you'll allow me a moment of bad joke telling, the competition ended with a bang!  The final night of fireworks was handled by the staff at La Ronde, as well as PyroSpectaculars by Souza, a company out of California.  The theme for the evening was 'A Tribute To Madonna'.  A new competition closing theme that began a few years ago where the musical works of selected artists are paired with fireworks.  To continue with the musical theme of the evening, Parc Jean Drapeau was also hosting the Osheaga Music & Arts Festival over the weekend which made for a bit of a scheduling problem.  Not thinking ahead, I had decided to chose Saturday as the day that I would try and shoot the fireworks from the deck of the Pont de la Concorde which connects Île Sainte-Hélène to Montreal.  I wanted to shoot from this spot because it was very close to a spot I used last year at Parc de la Cité-du-Havre, but with the added bonus of being able to get the Olympic Stadium into my photographs.  The original plan was to head to the site on bicycle, but that plan got washed out by some serious rain showers that hit about three hours before the show, and risked returning over the course of the evening.  That meant I'd have to get to the site by Metro and run the risk of getting trapped with all of the departing Osheagers at the end of the evening.  A quick look at the schedule told me that the final act was scheduled to finish around 10:50PM.  I'm not the fastest mover in the world, but I figured that would give me enough time to make it to the Metro before the concert site emptied.  I arrived a little after 8:00PM because that same quick glance at the concert schedule told me that a group I like, Weezer, was playing from 8:20PM - 9:20PM so I hung out on the bridge for an hour listening to some good rock 'n' roll while keeping an eye on the sky hoping that the rain would stay away.  After the music ended, I walked a little further across the bridge until I found the exact spot I was looking for and then waited for the show to start so I could shoot away.  The first photograph was taken at f/16, 17sec, ISO 100 at 48mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/13, ISO 100 at 48mm and the third photograph was taken at f/16, 12sec, ISO 100 at 48mm.  Here are a few more photographs that I took over the course of the evening.

f/16, 6sec, ISO 100 at 48mm

f/16, 17sec, ISO 100 at 48mm

f/16, 13sec, ISO 100 at 48mm

I actually stopped shooting about five minutes before the show ended in the hopes that the extra time would allow me to get to the Metro before everyone else, but my hopes were quickly dashed with I saw the lights on the main stage go dark at 10:36.  There was an encore, but the concert still ended about 10 minutes early, and those 10 minutes were enough to find me caught in a traffic jam of humanity.  I and about 20,000 others tried to make our way through the six doors of the Metro station.  Luckily, I was near the front of the massive crowd so I wasn't stuck very long.  Quite the way to end the summer fireworks season.