What’s Gotta Stay

Ice Castle

On my route to and from work, which is thankfully very short, I happen upon a house that has been slowly growing a very impressive ice creation.  Tonight after work I stopped with my camera in hand intending to catch it with the sunset.  Unfortunately I was a few minutes late for the exact light I was hoping for, so I may stop by again.

Ice Creation

Fortunately, though, I had the opportunity to visit with the artist, Brent.  He and his son were adding icicles to the top preparing for the next spray of water to grow the castle.  Brent mentioned he gets plenty of people asking how he created this display, so he is thinking of doing a short video and sharing what went into it.  We had a wonderful visit, and I hope to come back and document a bit more of what they are doing here.

Father & Son on their creation

I enjoy finding people like this when I get myself out of my everyday comfort zone.  By nature I am not one that typically seeks out opportunities to interact with people I don’t know.  Not that I don’t want to meet new people, I just get caught up with the daily routine.  With that in mind, I have been planning on participating in the “100 Strangers” project for some time.  The concept of the 100 Strangers project is to become a better street photographer and to meet new people.  Here is an excerpt from their site:

Want to be a better street photographer? Want to develop as a photojournalist? In order to be one you often need to have the courage to go and talk with people you don’t know. Often it’s good if you get them to pose for you or do things in front of the camera while they know you’re there. If your lacking some, you can get better with some practice. This is a contact photo group to inspire you to practice taking portraits of people you don’t know. The ultimate challenge for the members is to take 100 portraits of 100 strangers. Candids are not allowed. Little by little, learning by doing you’ll get better results. You might even find that taking contact with strangers isn’t as scary as you thought it would be. Here’s how it goes: Stop people by the street, talk with them, ask if you can take a portrait. Post the picture to Flickr and 100 strangers pool. Try to get an idea who they are. Write a caption that tells something about the person in portrait. Describe how you got the photo. Don’t post archive photos. Get out on the streets to take new ones. Keep on practicing. Don’t try to get all 100 pictures during one session, but try to find different people in different locations. Try to get a wide array of portraits: rich, poor, white, black, working, doing sports, etc. To support variety, the posting to the pool is limited to one picture per day per member. This is a place where you can learn from the others. Read the captions, participate in discussions both by commenting and in the discussion board.

So this first entry is a bit posed and surrounding their project, but I enjoyed getting of the car and not just shooting this scene and moving on.  This will be 1 of 100 with more to come.

Tags: 100 strangers, art, ice