The quiet of winter

There can be something magical about a snow fall, specially in the city. Late at night, when there is no one on the streets, no cars, no pedestrians, its amazing to hear how quiet the city can be. As if you are the only person alive.

I tried to capture that in this image. It was one of those nights: heavy snow fall, probably around midnight, streets were empty...peaceful



A little bit behind the story of this image. I was shooting a show in a small bar that night. It was snowing pretty heavily for most of the afternoon, driving and parking in the area was a hassle. I decided to take a little break and went outside. It might of been the contrast to the loud music inside, the world just seemed to peaceful. While I could hear the thump of the music through the walls and door to the bar, I found the scene just captured the serenity of a late Montreal night covered in snow.

That just goes to show you that you can get inspired at any time, for any thing.

Abandoned Geo W. Reed factory

Part of the fun of urban shooting is the exploring. You get to walk down streets you wouldn't normally walk down, see details you would normally pass by, and sometimes you get the mother load of places to shoot.

I had been wanting to shoot in this building for a while now. The Geo W. Reed building, also know as the Babcock & Wilcox factory, has been abandoned since 1982 and is a haven for graffiti artists. There isn't much information available on it (or maybe I'm just too lazy to really dig deep) but I read that it was apparently opened in 1895 and was used as a coach train manufacturer, tank part manufacturer and later on, plane part manufacturer. Not sure on the historical accuracy of this though.



It is a massive place. There are three floors, of which we only visited two. The ground floor with its wide open rooms, the slightly more confined second floor which was probably where the offices were, and the roof top. The walls have always changing graffiti. When researching online when I got back home, I saw a photo done in 2008 of a wall I had taken and it had totally different art on it.







As with most abandoned places, it is always advisable to go with a buddy or two. So I called up Reneau in the morning and he was more than happy to grab his gear and join me. You never know what or even who you will find inside. Discarded planks of wood with nails in them, broken glass, other people. The other thing to note is older buildings where not built with the same materials as we have today. So be very very mindful of what you touch as they could be contaminated with asbestos and other nasty things. We had a few almost spills, used our tripods as walking sticks, smartly didn't explore some nasty looking areas... and I did get the crap scarred out of me by a local inhabitant... a pigeon.

On this slightly warmish winter day, the building was good protection from the wind. Once you get over the heaps of junk people toss in at the entrance, the floor is pretty much dirt. Only concrete structures (walls and stairs) remain, the rest has either rotten away or burnt.





Littered on the ground you find many spray paint cans the artists leave behind. Some alone, or some in bunches.





After making our way around the main floor, we found some somewhat safe stairs that lead to the second floor. The footing was a big treacherous as there was water leaking down from the ceiling from the melting snow, which pool into ice puddles. While the ground floor was mostly dirt, the second floor was mostly ice. I could easily slide my tripod around.







Shooting in the building was difficult at best. Battling the junk for tripod positions and dealing with a very dark inside and very bright windows was hard. HDR was a flavour of the day (although only a few of the photos posted here are HDR), one can pull off some good shots with traditional single exposure shooting.



This is my favorite shot from the day... dripping water in front of the camera's lens, having to set the tripod up high in a stairwell,...



The sun was setting in an hour, so we made our way back down and outside, having spent a few hours in here. We plan on going back this summer, it will hopefully be easier to get around and maybe even get up on the roof.

Hope you enjoy the shots!

I have some more to process, I'll probably put them up on my facebook fan page which you can like at http://www.facebook.com/PierreBPhoto
Each of the images is clickable and will bring you to a slightly larger version on flickr.

Lazy Sunday Photo Walk

Not being in the mood for laundry and house cleaning (am I ever?) I grabbed my camera on Sunday morning and headed out the door (then to the bus, then to another bus, then to downtown, long live suburbs) for a photo walk. Texted my friend Reneau who happened to be free and we met up and walked some small side streets in the Plateau Mont-Royal area of Montreal.

The Plateau is a pretty funky part of town with a bohemian flavor. The sidewalks weren't clear, so it made the going a little bit rough (and my knee is still hurting today) but managed to get some interesting urban shots.

So many more streets to pick apart with my lens, but here are a few from the day!

Like I said, slightly bohemian aka hippy-ish ;)




One thing about the Plateau is there is a lot of urban art / graffiti




Even hippies like Starbucks...and I guess some don't care about using trash cans

Boston Road Trip - Day 2

After a few hours of sleep on Friday night, we got up ready for a full day of shooting. I had not been to Boston for a few years, in fact last time I was there was before I started up photography. So I was psyched (again, yes, the entire weekend was full of psyched-ness) to hit the streets and make some images.

We got a recommendation from the hotel to check out a little breakfast place called the Paramount. It was a 10 or so minute walk. Great place for breakfast, it has been open since the 1930s. Small place, great atmosphere.

I didn't want to unpack my gear just yet, so I took this image with my phone on our way down.



We had an initial plan of checking out the Gardens and Commons and then heading back to the hotel to grab the car to drive up to the north end. But as we were shooting, we really let inspiration be our guide and just kept on walking and never went back to the hotel until 4pm or so.

The Gardens were really nice with a small lake in the middle with a funky bridge, some ducks and other city wildlife around. Even found an empty fountain that I just had to climb in to get a few shots.









Empty Fountain shot with mah iphone



Made our way through the Commons and onto Tremont street. Going down alleys, heading into the Granary Burying ground, it seemed that everywhere we looked we saw something that needed to be photographed. The cemetery was really old with a lot of important US historical figures buried there: Franklin, Revere, Hancock, Sam Adams to name a few.













iPhone shot of a tombstone


We headed down School street past the Old City Hall building and starting to feel the cold settle in, we ducked into a Starbucks to warm up. As with most cities, it seems that you can find a Starbucks at every other street corner, and Boston was no different.








After a warming up, we headed out and made our way through the downtown streets. Statues, churches, street scenes...man, I was having a visual orgasm.

This so looks like she is trying to get the pigeon off her head












We made our way along the Freedom Trail and into the North End. Our goal was the Copp's Hill Burying ground, one of the oldest cemeteries in the US.











We were not too sure were to head next so we jumped on the Freedom Trail and made our way towards the water. While the trail lead over the bridge, which I had followed years ago when I was there and ended up at the maritime museum and then up a hill in a somewhat suburban neighborhood, we opted for taking more scenic shots along the water.








We ended up at the TD Gardens, same place we were at the night before. While the Leonard Zakim Bunker Hill bridge is really nice, its not the easiest thing to photograph. I was told there was a little park I could get into with a decent view of the bridge, but we never found it - in all honesty, we didn't look too hard. After taking a few more shots, we headed back to the hotel for some relaxing time (aka nap)






Having remembered that we didn't have lunch, we were both pretty hungry by now. So we took the car and headed back towards the Commons to eat at the Oak Room, which I read is famous for its Boston Cream Pie. We drove by an awesome looking church that we vowed to go back to. We got the Oak Room and realized it was inside the Fairmount hotel, so the prices were pretty steep.

We spoke to the Concierge and asked if he could recommend a decently priced restaurant with good clam chowder and he directed us a few blocks down to Skipjacks. The fish was awesome, the chowder was great, our stomachs were full, we were happy.

So back to the car we went and grab the tripods and snap some shots of the church






We then hopped back into the car for our final destination of the night, a city line right near Boston Habour and the popular Barking Crab restaurant (next time, we are so eating there)







Our night was done. We were both exhausted from the 10 hour + walking we did and knowing we still had a full day seminar with Pinhole early tomorrow morning, along with a 20 minute drive to get there, we decided to call it a night, both very happy with our day walk in Boston.