Fun with Ice

Again this post will be more about pictures, so I'll let them do most of the talking, but I will add a bit of commentary and current events. We've been laying low here in Fairbanks eagerly awaiting the spring thaw, but there's a lot of winter fun yet to be had.

We've been looking into permanent housing options a bit more, and need I mention the difficulties involved in that process. Perhaps I'll add some blogs as we get a bit more serious, but for now we haven't liked the purchase options or price points we've seen for the most part, and I'm more than a little surprised at what they will actually show. We're still hoping for a cute log cabin with lots of indoor and outdoor space, close enough to town to be convenient and far enough away to be quiet. It's good to dream.

As Springtime falls on the rest of the states, and kids break from school for spring break, so do the people of Alaska, but without the spring weather. This time of year does bring more dramatic swings in temperature however, and although its yet to break freezing temperatures (a few odd days mid winter being the exception), I read the average high by the end of March is 34 degrees. All I can say is that the next two weeks must change rather quickly.

Now on to the fun stuff! The annual World Ice Art Championships have now completed all of the competition events and judging is in. We took the weekend to tour the park and get some photos.

The park is pretty big, so those with smaller children brought their traditional Alaskan strollers.

I wanted to shoot some during day and night mostly to play with the camera. It was good to see the park during the day, but the best still shots by far were the nighttime shots.

Just a few of the daytime shots I liked.

 

This was one of my favorites and apparently a judge favorite also as it received the multi-block first place for the realistic category.

Not the Abstract category winner, but one of my favorites.

And just for the record, I didn't keep close eye on the winners and forgive me in advance for not properly recognizing the artists individually. All the art was incredible and there was a lot of it. I will, however, point over to the official web site at www.icealaska.com.

There was a kids park with a maze, and lots of fun things to climb on for the little ones. However, the big slide was the most popular with ours, and it seemed to be the hit of the park for many. Or at least honorable mention after the warming hut. Temps during the day weren't bad but started to chill quickly once the sun set. The indoor areas offered hot beverages as is typical here, but it was a bit crowded for my taste.

On to the night shots. We left and grabbed some dinner, and came when the sun had set. We also had the idea to extend our evening beyond the Ice Park. More on that later.

Again, some of my favorites in no particular order.

Compare this next one to the day photo above.

One of my favorites and a place holder, so it gets a second post also.

I liked the lighting on this one.

Again I felt the lighting was great on this one. I enjoyed that many of the pieces took on a completely different personality at night, and lighting was a big part of it. Some of the best pieces by day ended up with disappointing lighting, and some of the pieces you wouldn't give high marks on during the day really popped at night under the right lighting.

 

I just liked these next two and had pretty good pictures of them.

And of course the big slide was again the big hit.

Farewell World Ice Art Champions. We'll be looking forward to next year! I really had a great time and in retrospect I wish I had done season tickets and spent some time watching the artists during the first couple of weeks. I hope my schedule allows me more time next year for this.

And thank you Fairbanks for hosting such a great event.

My fun wasn't over yet, as I eluded to above. I've been wanting to see the Northern Lights since I arrived here, and although I had seen some very mild streaks in the sky, I've gone a whole winter here in Fairbanks without seeing a solid display. It was clear by now that trying to view the lights in town is futile, and the few times we had attempted to get out of town at night we ran into cloudy skies or poor viewing conditions. Now to my credit, this was apparently a very bad year for it, says the local authorities.

I had heard of a good place to view them which we had not yet tried, and the skies proved to be clear, so we proceeded to drive to Murphy Dome. To my delight we were able to see a reasonably good display, and I've found a great place with reasonably easy access to setup a camera. The bad news was it was bitter cold by now and I was dressed for temps no lower than maybe minus 10 for any sustained period of time. At around minus 20 I was under dressed to be standing around in the dark trying to get my camera to behave for the my first attempt at a fairly challenging subject.

I was able to get a shot or two in, but my remote wasn't working (I wasn't working my remote, I should say), and so my first attempts didn't come out with pictures I was satisfied with due to blur from my shaky hand trying to keep an open shutter in the cold. However, I learned a lot, and due to the historic experience, I'll post my first, somewhat blurry, pictures of the lights anyway.

The Aurora Borealis

 

K. Chadwick