Wild Weekend
How often do I get to do a "guy" weekend?! Well, this weekend was one of those.

It started off with a visit to Cornwall for a night on the town and to see Finger11 play live. Lots of drinking, lots of fun.

The plan was to leave the next morning, but things changed and we ended up going to a town in Québec called Valleyfield to see their annual boat race. They take their racing very, very seriously down there! The race was very fast and very loud. The fact that it started pouring rain in the middle of the day didn't seem to stop anyone. Instead, everyone sat there for hours while it all came down in a torrential storm.

Nothing like good, loud, wet fun.

Happy Birthday Canada
Well it's certainly nice to be back in Canada.

Today is Canada's 142nd birthday, and though the weather was touch-and-go for a while, the evening ended up being perfect for fireworks.

I had never viewed the fireworks shot from the Québec side of the river, so I went early and found myself an isolated area where I was the only person for about 100m. It wasn't easy to get to, but the view was great.

From a photography-creativity point of view, this was an excellent opportunity to play with the Manual mode. The sweet spot for shots ended up being f/4.0, 8/10s exposure, at ISO 200. While my lens can do f/2.8 throughout, there aren't pretty lens flares when the aperture is wide open.