Photo Friday: Lees Station

For many months, I have wanted to play with some time-exposure photography, capturing motion of obstacles at night. 

I was trying to think of some places where I could get above vehicles and shoot their lights as they passed in either direction. The obvious approach was an overpass.

I have shot vehicles from above the Queensway, so I didn't want to do that again. Not yet. I thought of the transitway (the public transit corridor that weaves its way through Ottawa), but I needed a place to get above. Using Google Maps, I traced out the transitway and looked for unique vantage points.

There are many places to get above the transitway, but I settled on the Lees Avenue Station. In this shot, you can see not only the bus-only route but also the Queensway and the Nicholas Avenue exit. You can also see Ottawa University buildings and the downtown cityscape.

I took 10 shots: one didn't turn out. Each of the remaining nine shots looked good and had characteristics of their own, such as buses stopping to let passengers on and off, others passing through. Sometimes, the Queensway had heavy traffic.

I couldn't decide which shot to use, so I combined them all. Here are nine shots, merged into one.

It's like a photo with nine lives. What do you think?

I also did this one, using only three of the photos and painting in one of the stopped buses.

Happy Friday!