Upper Canada Village, Morrisburg, Ontario – a second visit.

Upper Canada Village, Morrisburg, Ontario – a second visit.
Driving from Ottawa to the Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg, Ontario, Jeremy and I opted to take the more leisurely route along the shores of the St. Lawrence River. Jeremy and I formed the Flickr Ottawa group of two for this outing. Weather conditions and last minute Christmas commitments had whittled the group size down quickly.

We found Mr. And Mrs. Claus in a parking lot in Cardinal, Ontario. A jolly couple, but apparently Santa wasn’t sure where he had parked his reindeer. They seemed confident that their transportation would be found, so off Jeremy and I went to see the lights of Upper Canada Village.

Although it was only a bit past 4 o’clock when we arrived, the moon was already high in the sky and clearly visible through a break in the clouds.

Based on the line-up to get tickets, it was going to be a busier night than it had been when I had been here previously on the opening night, November 27th, 2010.

After about 3/4 of a hour in the line-up we reached the ticket wicket, bought our tickets, attached cameras to tripods and went on our way to shoot the lights out. The weather was certainly cooperating.

Jeremy had been here the previous year and I had already been here once in 2010, so this time around we were looking for some slightly different angles or experimenting with different lighting options. In my case, I had brought along my Nikkor 58mm f1.2 noct-Nikkor lens so was once again testing my ability to manually focus this fast lens with cool fingers. Since this lens is best when shot wide open or up to about f4.0, I was shooting at a much faster shutter speed that others who were shooting in the f8.0 to f16 range. It was interesting to talk to the other photographers who were there with their tripods since each had a different idea of what effect they wanted to achieve with any given focal length or aperture setting. Some wanted to be able to see the soft lighting of the snow in the foreground, others wanted to see only black (a bit tough with snow on the ground). Some were shooting portrait while others were shooting the same general scene in landscape configuration.

I just kept shooting until I got tired of holding the camera steady and then Jeremy and I headed back to Ottawa.