A picture's worth a thousand words

So as you may remember, in August Serdic and I had a long weekend in Quebec City. For a number of reasons, it was an excellent trip, our first real getaway together as a couple, a beautiful city, great meals and sightseeing, fabulous weather, etc. etc. etc. And I took a lot of pictures, as I tend to do when I'm travelling -- as anyone who has been forced enjoyed looking at my photo albums will know. Now, I don't claim to be a fabulous photographer, but I do have a good quality camera which takes a pretty nice picture, and I have found with digital cameras and the advances with screens and settings and such (and especially the ability to know right away if the photo will turn out or not and take another one if necessary) that I tend to take a lot of nice pictures. And then I like to share them with people. So when we got home I put my photos of QC up on my Flickr account, sent the link out to friends and family (and posted it here), basked in their admiration for a couple of days, and went on about my business.

Fast forward to mid-December. Sitting at my desk at work one afternoon I got an email via Flickr from a woman who works for the Musée de la Civilisation in QC. She had found my photos on Flickr and was wondering if I would grant permission for them to use one of them in an exhibition they are putting on this spring at the museum. At first, I thought it had to be some kind of hoax, as it just seemed so random. But I did some investigating and googling and she seemed to be who she said she was, and we exchanged several emails over the course of the week about the exhibit and I sent her the high resolution copy of the photo and so forth. She told me that the photo would be used in the "interactive" portion of the exhibit, and they wanted to use it because it was exactly the right angle and perspective of the city's skyline that they were looking for. So it won't be framed and hanging on the wall, but it is apparently in the exhibit, with credit given to me as photographer.

Obviously, Serdic and I decided we needed to go see it. It's not every day this sort of thing happens, after all. So we are off this weekend for a flying trip to QC to see the exhibit and have a couple of days of R&R and pampering. We are splurging and taking the train down and staying in a hotel in the lower part of the old section of the city, just across the street from the museum, in fact. I anticipate some great meals and a lovely soak or two in the hotel room's jacuzzi tub (we upgraded our room when we found out that for $10 more a night we could have a jacuzzi!). And the photo thing is still too cool for words.

What's funny about that particular photo is that it was a random snap out the window of the car. I had been trying to get a shot of the city from that angle as we came back in on the highway, but it's hard to take pictures out of a moving vehicle and they were all blurry. Then as we were bombing down the highway all of a sudden we came upon a stoplight. In the middle of the highway. And it was red. And we were saying to each other "what the heck is up with this stoplight in the middle of the highway?" when I turned to look and the city was perfectly framed in Serdic's open driver's side window. I threw the camera up and grabbed a shot just as the light turned green and we took off again. So we decided that stoplight was there for photo ops. Little did I know that it would be the photo that would bring me glory and riches. Well, glory at least. Well, for a moment or two, anyway. :-)