Day 145 - Adieu, Quebec City

Of all the almost 500 photographs I took in and around Quebec City this weekend, I think this is my favourite. It just has so much going for it: the range of colours, the perspective of the street in the lower half of the frame, the stacking of elements from bottom to top, the beauty of the 17th-century buildings in the foreground and the 19th-century hotel in the background. I could go on.

This picture jumped out at both Patti and me when we were looking at the photographs on the camera, again when we reviewed them on the small screen of my netbook and finally when we loaded them onto our iMac, with its massive screen. So I've decided to use it for my last Quebec City entry before getting back to featuring pictures of Fredericton.

It looks like a simple photo but it took some planning: I had to make sure the Olympus was set at its smallest aperture (f8) to create the greatest depth of focus; I had to work carefully with the shutter speed to let in the perfect amount of light to balance the sunlight and shadows in the frame; and then I had to wait for the crowds of people to thin enough to capture the beautiful buildings along the street. I am very pleased with the result.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, however, it's practically impossible to take a thoroughly original photograph of this beautiful city. So it didn't surprise me that, when I did a Google images search of historic Quebec City, the very first photo it found was almost an exact match to this one. Oh well. The fact that it's so popular at least confirms that it's a great shot.