Early Sunday morning a few weeks ago, I set out to shoot my favorite part of town: the famous south-side, simply know as “Old Montreal.”

The weather forecast that day was not very promising: an extreme blizzard with gusts of wind up to 90km/hr and a temperature of -34C. 

You can make no claim about the Montreal experience, if you have not been through one of our winters. 

The weather is brutally cold - yet beautiful at the same time.

I hoped to capture both conditions that day. As I arrived on location, the situation kept getting worse. I knew this would be a very rugged experience.

In any other setting, my aim as a street photographer would be to put my subject up front and maybe worry about composition. But the primary subject on that day was the storm and the city and then people. And yet hardly anyone was around that morning. 

That day, I brought both my FujiX100F and my Nikon with some wide-angle lenses in hopes of showcasing the immensity of the architecture. 

There are always cars everywhere in this part of Montreal - but, and on that day, there were hardly any. 

Even though I had my X100F in my coat pocket, the shear force of the Artic wind resulted in snow on the viewfinder. 

Although I managed to get this cleaned up, after a while I gave up and just aimed the camera as much as possible. 

Soon both my cameras were frozen solid. I found a place to drink coffee and warm up. It took almost an hour for my gear to thaw and, by the time I returned outdoors, snow removal trucks were everywhere and people were out and about.

So much for the decisive moment, the magic was gone.

All photos from that cold, cold day were all taken in 75-minutes.

Charles Lafrance