St Boniface Cathedral at Night

I have always liked the St. Boniface Cathedral, or at least what is left of it. I have been trying to photograph it at night for several years now. Every time I am in Winnipeg, something comes up that prevents me from getting there. Usually time. I have even gone to the grounds to find that the lights were not turned on that night!

At least I got there this time. But to do it, I had to borrow an old, slightly broken, and not very stable tripod I found in my parents basement. It was better than nothing. I got a couple of pictures, but didn’t hang out quite as long as I would have liked. I will try again to get there a bit earlier too. I didn’t get enough blue in the sky for what I was looking for.

Anyway, the Cathedral you see is just a facade. It was burned twice. The structure that remains was built in 1906. In 1972 a new Cathedral was built on the grounds. It appears to be inside some of the original stone building, behind this facade.

The Cathedral is within what is considered the “french section” of Winnipeg. There are many other French cultural and historical buildings within the St. Boniface  area of Winnipeg. I grew up at the other end (south) of St. Boniface.

One thing I appreciate about the location, is that photography appears to be encouraged. There are lights on the building, and photographers always seem to be around. The grounds also contain a grave yard, but no one guarding or ushering people away. On the grounds, Louis Riel is buried, a very important  French/Metis historical figure. I would imagine that all Canadian kids, not just Manitobans would have learned about him in school.

Some of this information was taken from this wikipedia article

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More Seattle Skyline – From Beacon Hill

One of the places I really wanted to get to take a night shot from was up on Beacon hill. I had seen another shot on Flickr that I wanted to try to get, and that was the location. I wasn’t sure where exactly to go. I managed to con Alison, my wife’s cousin to drive me up there one night. Again, I wasn’t completely sure where we were going, so we had to drive around a bit. We finally found Jose Rizal Park. I climbed up on a big metal storage box of¬†some kind, and set up my tripod. I was trying to get higher than the trees that are in the lower right of the picture that¬†hide some of the car light trails.

Seattle Skyline Night 

This one turned out ok. I like the look of the clouds and the Quest Field with the green light on the left. The pictures I took earlier didn’t have this green light to them.

Well, this is not quite the end of the story. In order to get my camera on a tripod, I had to remove my BlackRapid strap that screws onto the bottom of the camera in the tripod hole. I set it down on the ground as the light was disappearing. And left it.

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St. Anthony Main Area Minneapolis

St. Anthony Falls 

I headed to the St.Anthony Main area with Rich to take some pictures last weekend. (It seems to take longer and longer before I can get pictures into a post!)

We discovered a little park that juts out into the river getting you past the power lines for a better view. This park has lots of Excel Energy signs all over it, and boards describing hydro electric production and their benefits (while curiously ignoring any downfalls)

St. Anthony Main

We walked out into this park and got some reasonable pictures. We would have stayed longer, but some officers from the parks service came and told us that the park closed at dusk. No set time, just dusk. Strangely, they don’t chase many photographers away, and the time they get there to tell people to leave varies with the day. I will have to head back again sometime.

The star pattern in the lights was not from a filter. I was just shooting at f/16 with my Tamron 17-50 f/28 lens. Most lenses will give some sort of star pattern at that aperture. Number of points depends on the number of blades the lens has.

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