This article should be titled ‘How To Take Perfectly Good Images and Screw Them Up With Photoshop’. I was in Montreal, Quebec last month on my Megabus Canada experiment and did get some pretty cool images. However, after swearing near to use the special effects in Photoshop Elements, after several years, I’ve kind of started to dig the effects that create a painting effect out of an image.
What really got me started with these type of effects was creating opening and closing title images for YouTube videos. At the bottom of the article is an example of this in a video of Canada’s most cultured city. I had Corel Painter for a trial and loved what that software could do to an image but was too cheap to buy the full version…
For this image of the downtown skyscrapers, I’m on one of the revitalized piers of the Old Port (Vieux Port). Montreal has created quite a tourist area out of the old piers with a few being converted into a cruise ship terminal.
This image is taken from the top of Mont Royal at the famous lookout. It’s actually out of sequence and was taken before the image above and below. A nasty bit of wind and rain came through just as I started the climb up the staircase that leads to the Chalet on top. If I’d only held out for another half hour, I would have still had the nasty wind but the sky would have been clear as a bell.
A look at Pont Jacques Cartier, or the Jacques Cartier Bridge. This iconic structure crosses the St. Lawrence River, while passing overtop Saint Helen’s Island. Of course, what’s Canada without a brewery close by (Molson’s building). As you know, all 30 million or so of us play hockey, drink beer and are addicted to Tim Horton’s coffee. I’d rather live the France stereotype of hardly working and having sex several times a day!
A beautiful disaster. The Montreal Olympic Stadium was sort of finished for the 1976 Summer Olympic Games. The tower and roof (what all the cables are connected to) were completed many years later. There were rumours right from the moment the Montreal Expos took up residence in 1977 that the structure was falling apart.
Now, with the Expos gone to Washington, D.C. and the CFL’s Montreal Alouettes playing out of the cosier Percival Molson Memorial Stadium closer to downtown, the massive white elephant sits empty most of the year.
However, the tower (Montreal Observatory Tower) is fully completed and houses an observation deck up top. It is the highest inclined tower in the world (Take that, Leaning Tower of Pisa) and you get to the top via a funicular that runs on the outside back edge. I declined to go up this time around because, quite frankly, the angle completely messes with my head. I’m not generally afraid of heights but I was pretty close to passing out the last time I was there.
The Notre Dame de Bon Secours Chapel which houses the St. Marguerite Bourgeoys Museum. This is facing out from Old Montreal, looking to the St. Lawrence River and Saint Helen’s Island.
Built as the United States pavilion for the 1967 World’s Fair, Expo 67, the globe is now the Montreal Biosphere. Richard Buckminster Fuller was the architect of this distinct Montreal icon. It sits on Saint Helen’s Island, within Parc Jean Drapeau.
Restored in 2009, the tugboat Daniel McAllister sits idle in the Lachine Canal in the old port area of Montreal. This tug was originally launched as the Helena in 1907 and initially worked the Atlantic coast. This boat is the second oldest oceangoing tug still in existence in the world.
I found surprising peace and isolation on Saint Helen’s Island. Of course, it was 7:30 in the morning on an October weekday and there was a storm threatening. So close to thousands of people, I came across a security guard driving loops of the park and one other man walking a dog. Other than that, I had this large urban park to myself.
The above image is taken from beneath the Concordia Bridge. Like the Jacques Cartier Bridge, the Concordia spans the St. Lawrence River while accessing Saint Helen’s Island. This is a long exposure shot with the help of my Polaroid Variable ND Filter.
The video below basically covers my day trip to Montreal.
