Ottawa’s Winterlude 2011

Last year I featured the Ottawa Winterlude on my picture blog so I figured I would do an encore this year. This year’s Ottawa Winterlude is being held for 3 weekends starting the first weekend of February 4th 2011. We visited the Confederation park tonight to see the Ice sculptors at work, so here is some of the works.

Winterlude is celebrating Chinese New Year. A team of ice carvers, straight from the Harbin International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival in China, participated in the 24th Rogers International Ice-Carving Competition. The Ying and Yang was featured on a few of the ice sculptures this year.

Here’s a sculpture that offered some interesting perspective. The sculpture also gave me the opportunity to frame my beautiful fiancé in a nice winter night picture.

I hope you enjoy the Crystal Garden and highly recommend you visit this event.
Enjoy the Gallery,
Alain G. Pratte

Winterlude 2010 Ice-Carving

It was a chilling -23 C Saturday night but it did not stop the flock of spectators that came out to brave the cold and view the Rogers 23rd International Ice-Carving Competition at Confederation Park in Ottawa. Winterlude gathers professional carvers from around the world that come and put their talent to the test.

Here is some of the talent that I photographed.

I was a little unprepared for this winter photo shoot. The cold played a big factor to the enjoyment of the event and I was a little under dressed to be able to take the time needed for pictures I wanted to capture. Lesson learned, next year I will be better dressed and better prepared to take the shots I really want.

Enjoy the few pictures I did get.
Alain Pratte

Hot air balloon festival in Gatineau

Labour day weekend is famous in the Outaouais region for the “Festival de Montgolfières de Gatineau”.  Huge crowds gathered for this 4 day festival making it a great success for the Outaouais region.  The festival hosted 67 hot air balloons, 300 activities, 40 amusement rides and an excellent line up of open air concerts.  The nearly perfect weather allowed 5 successful lift offs of the seven departure windows, alas 2 lift offs had to be canceled due to stronger winds.

Enjoy the gallery of pictures I took of the event.  This is a photographer’s paradise for beautiful colour images.