St. Patrick's Parade

Saturday, March 26, 20 000 people braved the cold and wind along rue St. Jean to cheer on the second annual St. Patrick's Day Parade. Colourful pipe & drum bands from Montreal, Boston, NYC and Quebec City mixed in with community groups and schools.

I'm not particularly a parade-loving person. However, armed with my 70-200 f/4L Canon lens, I zoomed in on all sorts of happy faces and bright greens, flashy reds and military finery. A high early-afternoon sun created strong shadows and made metering tricky. I shot in the full sunny areas and cropped the photos to eliminate  the darkest shadows and finished with a good number of keepers.

To see more go to my flickr site - link.

Oh, and the Irish beer after the festivities with Paulette, Monique and Phil added to my merriment.

Photos Afoot to Photos Ariding

It's minus 3 C (-9 with the wind chill) and there's still plenty of snow about. Yesterday Paulette and I explored la Montagne Fendue on snowshoes (link). Today I couldn't resist going for a spin on my new deVinci Silverstone road bike.

Here's a picture of the blue bomber in our backyard supported by at least two feet of crusty snow. Came home with frozen hands and feet, pleased that I could manage the clipless pedals and curved handlebars.

I'm ready to hang up my MSR Ascents and climb aboard my deVinci for more outdoor fun. Not sure though how compatible my camera will be with biking. I'll let you know.

The Parc national du Mont-Mégantic was named an International Dark Skies Reserve in 2007 and so is the place to go for dark nights and bright stars in Quebec. You can see the astronomical observatory in the distant left background.  Paulette and I snowshoed up the steep trail to Mont-Saint-Joseph with our friends Marc and Édith and further along a ridge to a lookout and this view.

I cropped the original picture from the normal 2:3 aspect ratio (producing standard 4x6 prints) to a movie theatre widescreen aspect of 2.39:1 (picture is 2.39 times as wide as high). This is even wider that the new HDTV ratio of 16:9 (or 1.77 times as wide as high). This aspect ratio doesn't change the angle of view of my camera lens but simulates a more dramatic panoramic view.

Canon 7D, 15-85 lens at 15 mm, 1/800 sec, f/8, ISO 200

Below is the view from our rented chalet cropped to the same movie widescreen format. Go to flickr for a few more pictures of our weekend around Mont-Mégantic- link

Parc national des Monts-Valin

I posted this photo last February as part of a series taken when Paulette and I went snowshoeing in this Quebec park just east of Lac St. Jean. I also submitted it to a Photo News contest called Snow Days. It's been viewed by many people but most exciting was a comment from Michel Roy, "wow, super". I consider this high praise coming from an extremely talented professional photographer.

Check out Michel Roy's flickr site. Stunning images!

Junction Creek, Sudbury

My first photo outing of January 2011 took me, Blaine and Richard to Junction Creek, Sudbury. We focused on a stretch of open water and a congregation of hundreds of mallard ducks grooming and feeding along the icy shore. 

Suddenly the sun found an opening in the clouds and the ducks came alive; bright orange feet, emerald heads and sparking white snow. 

Minutes later a snow flurry blew across the sun creating the lovely speckled panorama you see below. 

Canon 7D at 85 mm, 1/250 and 1/400 sec, ISO 200, f/9, hand held