Today was very overcast and had snow showers all morning. So I used my camera’s video facility to grab a few minutes of snow flakes floating down, so I can watch them when back in Karratha! I’ll do the same for another few days. Unfortunately, because the clouds are light grey, I cannot see the snowflakes against the clouds, and so have to have a dark backdrop to see them. Which means that I cannot use the picturesque open areas, I need to use buildings. So I did a couple of videos outside my hostel window. They came out pretty okay I think.

Then leaving the camera at the hostel, I took off for a 5 kilometre walk around the old city, just soaking up the old buildings (and the rain because that was what was coming down by that time).

By the time I got back to the hostel it was 1pm. So I prepped my full camera backpack and headed down to the wharf to take a ferry across the river to the ferry port close to Desjardins. I wanted to wait until the sun started to go down, so I could take some photos of Quebec from the other side of the river. Again given my narrowest lens is 50mm, I know I’ll have to stitch some shots together but that’s not going to be too difficult. And getting shots of La Chateau Frontenac (the most photographed hotel in the world, apparently) would be nice.

The sun was out, there was only around 25% of the sky covered in clouds as I left my hotel. What could possibly change? So off I went. I took a long way just so I didn’t get to the ferry terminal until 2pm (sun going down at 3.45pm). The terminal was great and I got to watch a couple of ferries come and go. The ferry crossing and getting to the wharf is very interesting given the strength of the water. The ferry will take a relatively straight trajectory off the wharf on the other side and then turn towards the QC (Quebec City) side. With the river coming in, it goes a few hundred metres away and then just seems to sit there and let the river carry it back. In reality it is slowly inching its way forward, but it’s coming in sideways. And it stays sideways until close to the end, when the front end is against the wharf and roped, then it brings the back of the ferry in. On the way out, the back section remains roped until after the front has gone close to a 90 degree angle from the wharf. And it’s a large 4 storey ferry with vehicles at the bottom, 2 levels for passengers and then the bridge.

I am also really fascinated by the ice chunks floating up and down the river, with piles of snow on top. And the ferry “ploughing” through the ice. Memerising to watch. These photos are across to where I am heading.

So by the time I got onto the ferry at my side, the skies had clouded up, and by the time I disembarked at the other side, there were strong showers about which created an inability to see more than about a kilometre. Of course that would happen. There was nowhere to set the tripod and camera up inside the terminal unless I wanted to shoot through glass, so I headed out to the side of the terminal opposite from where the snow showers (which converted to rain showers and then after a while back to snow showers) were coming from. It was a really nice, partly sheltered spot next to what looks to be a park or a carpark that was covered in snow.

Eventually the showers stopped, the sight cleared and the lights of the buildings started to come on. So I took a few handfuls of photos. I got to play around with the different time, aperture, ISO and white balance settings on the camera too. Here are a few shots with the changing time.  It’s likely not hard to work out which is La Chateau Frontenac.

For the first shot below, the shutter is open for 2 seconds, and for the next two it is open for 5 seconds. I changed the aperture from 4.5 for the first shot to 10 for the next two, hence they are darker. I like the first one because the ice in the water is not as smoothed out. It’s fun to play with the camera settings!

 

After these I took the next ferry back to QC, and took some photos back of the other side. Both of these two below had the shutter open for 20 seconds, hence the lines where the ferry travels in the first photo. The second photo has a brighter area due to the light from the moon which was coming up.

I headed back to the hostel after these photos as the second cameras battery was running flat. Then off to bed I went.