It’s WinterFest time in Rochester. For the past several years, that means the Peace Plaza downtown is decorated for SocialICE.
The all-pedestrian First Street is decorated with all sorts of ice sculptures, most with some added lighting.
We were surprised to see this little minigolf setup this year. I’ve been downtown for SocialICE a couple times, but Lynne hadn’t seen it before. I think this is the first time I took a DSLR to grab some shots.
The highlight of the event is the bars made of ice. These have varied over the years from one huge bar with ice mugs to the several separate bars they had this year. Each has a different theme.
The fireplace sculpture wasn’t a bar, but it was pretty fun.
The themes and looks were all quite different.
The ice-encapsulated fruit was pretty cool. All the workmanship was amazing throughout the plaza.
And the lighting was as varied with reds, greens, whites, blues.
Some of my favorite shots were of the people behind the bars. Where else but Minnesota would folks do this in temps hovering around zero Fahrenheit?
The Paris themed bar was probably the most elaborate. The Eiffel tower was probably close to five feet tall. I didn’t notice the Louvre’s pyramid right away.
It seems appropriate that there was an Olympics theme. When we first saw this bar, there was maybe one person in front of it. By the time we noticed it and pulled up our cameras, a rush of maybe eight or ten people pushed by us up to the bar. It wasn’t going to be clear anytime soon, so we walked on. When we came back, it cleared to only a couple people. I waited and hoped and finally was able to grab a shot before more people walked in.
That seemed to happen a lot – there would be no one until we started to take photos. Then, boom, a big rush. It became sort of the inside joke of the evening. Still, I had fun shooting the artwork and some of the faces. And it was nice to have the good camera this time. I took my little S90 to SocialICE a couple or three years ago. It did a decent job, but sometimes the gear does make a difference. Low light is one of those times.
Nice pics, love the ice sculptures and different colored lights. I’m not crystal on the camera used. All the SocialICE pics you show here were with a Canon S90 – is that right?
If so, very impressed.
Comment by Tre — May 3, 2014 @ 11:16 am
No, I used the S90 a couple years ago when I stopped by the event. This time, I had the 5DIII.
Comment by Tony — May 3, 2014 @ 11:44 am