Vieux Québec or Old Quebec is one of the most beautiful inhabited parts of Canada and one of the oldest in North America. Walk around inside the fortified walls of the city and you feel like you are in Europe with all the narrow cobblestone streets, stone masonry, copper roofs, outdoor cafes and American tourists in Hawaiian shirts. Ok ok there aren’t that many Hawaiian shirts! But there sure are a lot of tourists and if you go to Quebec City you’ll understand why. Good food, beautiful surroundings (like the Chateau Frontenac pictured above) and friendly people are just a part of it, add to that the museums, parks, festivals in the summer and carnival in the winter and you’ll see why Quebec City is world renowned for it’s joie de vivre.
One of the fun things about night photography in busy places such as this is that when using a tripod and long exposures, the people who are walking in front of your camera as you expose basically vanish in the photo so long as they keep moving. This image of Chateau Frontenac required 5 initial exposures with the longest being 30 seconds. You’d be amazed at how many people were actually walking back and forth in the street while I took this shot. A nice part about taking so many long exposures is that people will come and talk to you while you’re standing there next to a big camera on a tripod. I guess it must look like I’m really not doing anything while the camera is doing it’s thing for the 90 seconds or so that it takes to shoot the different exposures. On this occasion I ended up talking to a really nice guy from New Jersey (not wearing a Hawaiian shirt) who just loved Quebec City. He was just raving about everything he had seen and told me about the previous times he had visited the area decades ago. It made me feel proud to be Canadian and Quebecois knowing that people feel so welcome here and come back again and again.
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WOW THIS IS SIMPLY STUNNING! :)
Thanks Janie! If you have not yet visited Quebec City, I’d highly recommend it.
It´s magical, I hope to visit this place one day. Congrats for the pix. Awesome job!!!
That’s one beautiful shot, Ken! Great point of view, fantastic detail and texture on the foreground buildings, and one of my favorite buildings in the background. (Used to live in Montreal.)
Thanks Garcia and Rob, Quebec City is a special place and well worth visiting at least once so I hope you get to go Garcia. Hope u get a chance to come back from time to time Rob!
This is a very nice capture and I was wondering if you would share your settings as I am heading to Quebec City next week and I would love to try and capture this myself. Any help is greatly appricated. Also what photo processing did you do afterward i.e. HDR or what?
Thanks
Randall
Great picture. I live in Quebec City, and this is the most stunning picture I could find to share with some friends. I’m glad your name is in the picture, as you deserve all the credit.
Like a city in a fantasy world. :)