Photography at the Old Port

Since I had been dissatisfied with my photos of Westmount, I decided to go out and do some photography around the Old Port area.  Lunchtime wasn't my favourite time to go out for taking photos, but that was the only time that was okay with my two other colleagues who planned to come with me.  So, lunch hour photography it was!

The results I don't have to mention - too many overexposed shots of anything that was in plain daylight.  I still went ahead and took a few shots at the boats that were around and also the museum (of something or the other ;-)) that was standing tall against the blue sky.  We did find a kind of interesting nook underneath one of the quays where we tried to get a few shots of the ice formations and a couple of pigeons that kept flying into it for a drink of water.

The pillars underneath the quay.. I tried to capture the vertical pattern of the columns as well as the light and shade, but the light totally washed out the details in the foreground.

When I failed to capture anything of interest without the fear of overexposing, I tried to get this boat.  This is without any post-processing. A little saturation would go a long way of course.

Tried to photograph the turbine going under the boat with the pieces of ice clinging to the rope as well as the little whirlpools.  The turbine was a nice rusty orange, but it looks washed out here.  I later realized that I should have used a smaller f-stop and a faster shutter speed.  I used f-7.1 and 1/100 here - not good at all.  Good lesson here.

And here's Mr. Pigeon - bad composition and totally overexposed in the foreground.  It could have been much better composed if I wasn't too scared to slip on the ice while lean over the railings a bit.

When I couldn't get anything to focus on, I decided to go for the knot in the rope.  Too pale in the bright light.. I didn't want a very small aperture since I wanted a medium DoF, but what I didn't remember for that blindingly bright day was the "sunny 16" rule - f-16 and a shutter speed which is the reciprocal of the ISO.  My shutter speed was fine, but the f-number wasn't.. (sigh!)

This shot was originally a little pale, till I bumped up the saturation a little bit and increased the highlights as well.  Passable for a bright day pick. 

Playing with the light a little bit here, and the DoF as well - a smaller f-stop and I liked the shade and the pattern.  

The bright colours are nice in this, but again I missed the mark - no focus in this image. I think I need to pay more attention to achieving a point of interest and then work around it.