I WANT TO EAT A NUT OF LAERMA!

NEPEAN AT NIGHT...

I tried my hand at night street photography when I took that batch of pictures in downtown Ottawa the other week.

I thought I'd take the camera with me on a late evening trip to Merivale Blockbuster.



Traffic lights at the corner of Meadowlands and Tiverton, with the playing field of Parkwood Hills school in the background.



The intersection of Meadowlands and Chesterton, with the bright lights of Merivale Road in the distance.

I got a decent headlight streak.



Looking backwards (towards the east) at an Ottawa OC Transpo Bus, which I think is another New Flyer Invero, dropping someone off on Meadowlands between Grant Carman and Chesterton. This was my only successful photograph of a bus that evening.



The parking lot of Merivale Place (the strip mall which has HMV as well as Winners, Home Outfitters, and others) with the Scotiabank with the drive-through ATM and the Beer Store visible.

I'm a bit disappointed that lighted sign panels have a tendency to blur, so you can't see the Scotiabank logo.



Woo-hoo, made it to Merivale Road!



The Merivale Esso station, whose sign also gets blurry when photographed at night.

Ooh, the price of regular gas at Merivale Esso is down 5.4 cents compared to what it was on June 5^th!



Unfortunately, I spent so much time taking pictures (since, in lieu of having a tripod, I had to steady the camera using objects rooted in the ground) that they were just locking up Blockbuster when I got there.

But here's a night shot of Blockbuster Video anyway, with Speedy Muffler and Merivale McDonald's in the background.



This shot came out quite nicely, with a tanker from Queensway Tank Lines replenishing the Esso station's underground tanks, and a store called Stay Organized, which specializes in custom storage units, can also be seen in the Merivale Fair strip mall at the corner of Merivale and Meadowlands.

I find the smell of gasoline being pumped from a tanker oddly satisfying. I mean, obviously, I smell gasoline fumes when I fill the lawnmower, but it's not nearly as intense a smell. What I smelled that night when I took this picture was so overpowering that it wasn't diluted by any other smells in the immediate area.



A shot of the Meadowlands-facing side and drive-through menu of the dual-bannered Wendy's and Tim Horton's restaurant that I'm especially proud of, because I got a perfect red tail-light streak twinned with a headlight streak! And the restaurant looks pretty sharp for a night photo too!



Streaks of light made by an OC Transpo bus driving through the intersection of Meadowlands and Tiverton. The reflections are on the top of the utility box that, I presume, controls the traffic lights, which I was using as an impromptu tripod.

There's nothing beyond the Tiverton intersection that's lit well enough to be worth attempting to take a picture of, and the batteries in the Ricoh Caplio camera were pretty much dead.

posted by Steve Brandon @ 4:48 PM