Digital Citizen Photography

St Mary’s Basilica Church in Neighbouring Building Windows
Halifax, Nova Scotia
November 12 2007

I was out for a photo walk with my camera this day, just looking to see if there were anything interesting to photograph in the Halifax Downtown area when I saw this beautiful reflection of St Mary’s Basilica Church in the church like windows of a building on Barrington Street. This building is a condominium building at the time, but whatever the unit arrangements on the inside, the windows ran continuously up the building, broken so the reflection appeared like a collage.

To get this photo, I had to stake out a very specific spot in the middle of Barrington Street near the corner of Spring Garden Road, two of the busiest streets in Halifax Downtown. I had to find it first, rushing out between traffic breaks to see where I could get the reflection just right for the photo and get the right standing height. Then I had to do it again, with the spot and height in memory because I could not mark the street, and snap a few photos in a hurry, not having to worry about the shot composition this time. I’m sure some drivers were wondering what was so interesting, like maybe if someone were having sex in the window or something. Unfortunately, it was just a saintly church reflection.

But I did get lucky that the windows were practically all closed to give a complete collage. The sun was also nowhere in sight to provide an ideal background in the afternoon when it would normally be in the reflection. No sun also meant fewer more people out and about driving somewhere to make it more difficult for me just to get a less ideal photo.