Through The Ice - Mccall Winter Carnival

Artwork: #59 of 1207 by Photography Moments - Sandi

Tags: nature photographs, landscape photographs, winter photographs, ice photographs, white photographs, nature canvas prints, landscape canvas prints, winter canvas prints, ice canvas prints, white canvas prints

Featured:

Comfortable Art - ...

03/08/2013

Seasons of Beauty

03/07/2013

Artists News

03/07/2013

Title:

Through The Ice - Mccall Winter Carnival

Artist:

Photography Moments - Sandi

Medium:

Photograph - Print - Photography

Description:

Information found on en.wikipedia.org - McCall Idaho, Winter Carnival, Ice Sculpture and Christmas Lights

A Winter carnival is an outdoor celebration that occurs in wintertime.

Winter carnivals, or festivals, are popular in places where winter is particularly long or severe, such as Scandinavia, Canada and the northern United States. Most winter carnivals involve traditional winter pursuits such as ice carving, snow carving, ice hockey, skating, skiing and dog sledding.

McCall is a resort town on the western edge of Valley County, Idaho, United States. Named after its founder, Tom McCall, it is situated on the southern shore of Payette Lake, near the center of the Payette National Forest. The population was 2,991 as of the 2010 census, up from 2,084 in 2000.[3]

Originally a logging community whose last sawmill closed in 1977, McCall is now an all-season tourist destination for outdoor recreation. The resort town is known for its Winter Carnival, extended winters, and the highest average snowfall in the state.

Ice sculpture is a form of sculpture that uses ice as the raw material. Sculptures from ice can be abstract or realistic and can be functional or purely decorative. Ice sculptures are generally associated with special or extravagant events because of their limited lifetime.

The lifetime of a sculpture is determined primarily by the temperature of its environment and thus, a sculpture can last from mere minutes to possibly months. There are several ice festivals held around the world, hosting competitions of ice sculpture carving.

Sculpting ice presents a number of difficulties due to the variability and volatility of the material. Ice may be sculpted in a wide range of temperatures and the characteristics of the ice will change according to its temperature as well as the surrounding temperatures. Sculptures are generally carved from blocks of ice and these blocks must be carefully selected to be suitable for the sculptor's purposes and should be free of undesired impurities. Typically, ideal carving ice is made from pure, clean water. However, clear, transparent ice is a result of the freezing process and not necessarily related to the purity of the water. Clouded ice is often the result finely trapped air molecules that tend to bind to the impurities while naturally freezing. Mechanically clear ice is usually made as the result of controlling the freezing process by the circulation of the water in the freezing chamber. This process hopes to eliminate any trapped air from binding to the impurities in the freezing process. Certain machines and processes allow for slow freezing and the removal of impurities and therefore are able to produce the clear blocks of ice that are favored by ice carvers. However, not all blocks that are carved are clear ice. White ice blocks look like snow and are sometimes carved. Colored ice blocks are produced by adding dyes to the ice and can be carved as well. In some instances, clear ice and colored ice are combined to create a desired effect.

There are various sizes of ice blocks that are produced artificially. Naturally made blocks can be cut to almost any size from frozen rivers or from "ice quarries," which are essentially lakes or ponds that have frozen over. Large ice blocks must be moved by heavy machinery and are used for large ice sculpting events or as part of an ice hotel.

The temperature of the environment affects how quickly the piece must be completed to avoid the effects of melting; if the sculpting does not take place in a cold environment, then the sculptor must work quickly to finish his piece. Some sculptures can be completed in as little as ten minutes if the carver is using power tools such as chainsaws and specialty bits fitted to a die grinder.

Ice sculptors also use razor-sharp chisels and hand saws that are specifically designed for cutting ice.

As various technologies are adapted for use with ice carving, many sculptures are now created largely by machine. CNC machines and molding systems are now commonly used to create ice sculptures and complicated logos from ice. Color effects are also possible by a number of techniques, including the addition of colored gels or sand to the ice.

This art form is traditionally taught in culinary schools using text books such as Ice Sculpting the Modern Way, Joseph Amendola's Ice Carving Made Easy and Mac Winker's Ice Sculpture: The Art of Ice Carving in 12 Systematic Steps. There are also small schools that teach ice carving.

Christmas lights are lights used for decoration around Christmas. The custom harks back to the use of candles to decorate the Christmas tree in upper-class homes in 18th-century Germany. Christmas trees displayed publicly and illuminated with electric lights became popular in the early 20th century. By the mid-20th century, it became customary to display strings of electric lights as Christmas decoration detached from the Christmas tree itself, along streets and buildings. In the United States, it became popular to outline private homes with such Christmas lights in tract housing beginning in the 1960s. By the late 20th century, the custom had also been adopted in non-western countries, notably in Japan.

Through the Ice, Scenic McCall Idaho Street Scenes Photography

Posted:

Statistics:

Viewed 178 Times  -  Last Visitor from Scottsdale, AZ on 05/12/2013 at 12:24 AM

Colors:

Image Link:

Sales Sheet:

PDF Sales Sheet