Winterlude - Ice Sculptures

[Manfred M]

Winterlude - Ottawa's annual winter festival started on Friday and runs for the next two weekends. The ice sculptures are always my favourite part, so I headed out to photograph them this evening. These are two closeups of two of the sculptures.


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[Tronhard]

Great images Manfred and the sculptures are amazing, especially with the lighting.

[ST1]

Ooh "There be Dragons" excellent work both on your part and the sculptors, well done Manfred.

[Wavelength]

Amazing job and their really well captured images!!!

[Tronhard]

Roughly how big are the ice sculptures Manfred? and
is it correct to say that they are done by international carvers, maybe professionals - not sure...

[Shadowman]

Nice set.

[Donald]

The way in which the light plays on the sculptures has been wonderfully shown in these images. Going in close to pick detail is an example of the photographer's knowledge and vision. Most people would, I'd guess, go for the wider shot of the whole sculpture.

A perfect example of studying the subject to decide what will work best.

[NorthernFocus]

Ditto Donald's comments. Having shot at the ice park in Fairbanks several years ago I'm familiar with the challenges involved. Nicely done.

[Manfred M]

Roughly how big are the ice sculptures Manfred? and
is it correct to say that they are done by international carvers, maybe professionals - not sure...

The sculptures are some 10 - 12 ft / 3 - 4 m high. Yes these are done by "professional" ice carvers from all over the world.

[Rita]

The ice carvings are amazing and you have captured them so very well. A few years back my sister went to Winterlude, when she came home she couldn't stop raving about the ice carvings.

[Manfred M]

Thanks Donald and Dan. Winterlude is a very popular event, with attendance estimates of upwards of one million visitors, so the place can get quite crowded.

I find that Sunday nights are usually the best opportunity for the type of photography I was trying to do (very cold or bad weather helps too). Yesterday I was lucky that the American Superbowl football game was on, so a lot of people that would normally be out wandering about were at home glued to their television screens. That being said, it was still quite busy from a photography standpoint, with a reasonably steady stream of visitors.

The main display area is under a shelter to protect the carvings from bad weather. While that might help, that also means that the whole back of the display areas is covered in dark blue fabric drapes with some white artwork on it. With a bit of care, that can be isolated and eliminated in post. The ceiling is light coloured and the floor is too (something called "snow", so that restricts shooting angles quite a bit. A bit too high or a bit too low and the shot doesn't work. There were support columns holding up the roof and a fairly narrow railed walkway that restricted shooting positions.

The statues are cordoned off behind ropes, so one can't get up close, hence all my shots were with a 70-200mm lens. I even had my 80 - 400mm lens along just in case, but did not end up using it, partially because it was snowing quite hard and I didn't want to change lenses if I didn't have to. A tripod was necessary and places where one could be positioned without getting into other vistor's way was another restriction; lots of security around to ensure that both the visitors and photographers behaved themselves.

The lighting was quite tricky too. The statues are illuminated with LED lighting systems. In some cases the colours changed in others they were relatively fixed. The trick was to try to find a shooting position where the lighting was contrasty enough to give the ice texture. Flat looking ice is rather uninteresting to look at.

Those two images are the only ones I am happy with. If conditions permit, I might try to get out to shoot again. I definitely want to get out onto the canal to shoot the skaters during evening "golden hour". Hopefully the weather will cooperate with my schedule.

[mugge]

Just great, I especially like the close up views. I can never understand why people take pictures of a whole zebra when just the flanks are so more interesting.
Cheers Ole

[Tronhard]

Just great, I especially like the close up views. I can never understand why people take pictures of a whole zebra when just the flanks are so more interesting.
Cheers Ole

Perhaps they think it's a way of getting a head in photography?

[rpcrowe]

Lovely images as usual! Which I what I expect when I open one of your postings...