It was getting to be pretty late in the day, kind of chilly outside (as today, September 22, 2018, was the first day of Fall/Autumn), and the sun was falling fast but I knew that sunny days wouldn’t be everyday so I packed and got ready to leave.
I loaded one pannier with my usual bike-riding kit, along with some cool-weather gear (biking gloves, a warm 3rd layer) and decided to grab my 30-year old red Lowe backpack and throw my camera gear (this time just an A7Sii body, Tokina f/2.8 11-16mm, Canon f/2.8 24-70mm, and Beholder EC1 gimbal) in there so it wouldn’t be bouncing around in a pannier as the bike hit the Montreal bumps which are extraordinarily and impressively horrible all year round haha.
I biked downtown (Strava route: https://www.strava.com/activities/1859394611) without a map and kinda just went about my own business. I stopped at Parc Jeanne-Mance along the way to gather some B-Roll of the sunny park with people relaxing and going about their own business.
Then I whipped down Rue De Bleury, following another biker who seemed to know what she was doing until I saw these amazing multi-coloured windows (of the Montreal Convention Centre / Palais des congrès de Montréal) reflecting multi-coloured light all along the street! And that’s what got me to stop at Place Jean-Paul Riopelle.
I kicked my kickstand down, left my bike sitting in front of a nice-looking couple, took off my backpack, and whipped out my wide angle and gimbal to get the video that you see in the Instagram post two photos above. The photo just above this text is a still photo taken with the same wide-angle lens. I did try with my 24-70mm but it just didn’t give the same effect (obviously).
The photos on this post were my favourite shots, though I did bike further down to Old Port to take some other photos there. I got asked a couple times about my bike, with me explaining that I built it with a kit, and both couples’ reactions were variations of “oh wow! I’ve never seen something like that before!” One with a French accent of course haha.
