What to say about Old Montreal. It can be really beautiful but it can also be a tourist trap. I like to take an urban photo walk through the streets every other month. I hadn’t been there at night in a long time. A few days ago, a friend and I walked through the snow and slush and had a pretty interesting photo walk, in places where we had never been before.
However, one of my destinations was the McAllister boat. I hadn’t taken images of it in many years, and each time I was there, the sky wasn’t nice, there were too many people around. So on this quiet winter night, the setting was perfect. The backdrop silos just add so much to the image. An old style tug boat (at least, I think it’s that) with old grain silos in the back, paints a wonderful picture.
There are many bad things about pollution (pollution BAD!) but one of the good is light pollution for night photos! Instead of having a clean black sky, there is always a smokey effect going on which adds drama. I love the fact that the boat is still on the frozen river, kind of like a relic frozen in time.
Photo wise, not much to say. This is pretty much how I saw the image. My LCD is always changed to show a black and white image, I find it helps guide my eye to what I want. The RAW file that is saved is always saved in full colour, the LCD uses a small JPG. (to change this yourself, go to your menus, Picture Styles, change it to monochrome. Make sure you are shooting in RAW though. If you are in JPG, the file saved will be black and white as well!).
As there was no one around, I had all the time to compose as I wanted, so this image is not recropped and barely reworked, other than reconverting to black and white.
Here is the original image, almost straight out of camera. And followed by a brownish toned image. I prefer the traditional black and white over the brown / sepia tone for this one. I’m a contrasty kind of guy. Although I could get used to the brown tone 😉
If you like this image or any of my others, feel free to contact me for some print purchases! Canvas, archival paper, almost any size available 🙂