When most of us find ourselves looking through ice, it may be the last, chilling scene we ever see. Here are 33 frozen photos from this week's Shooting Challenge that you can enjoy while warm.
Winner: Space Scape
Ice reminds me of space. Naturally. So after some thinking, I decided to set out and create a space-scape using ice, light and a few things lying around the kitchen. In this case, it was cupcake decorations and flour. I began by lining a baking pan with some wax paper, filling it with water, adding some transparent elements and experimenting with the colors and shapes of the ingredients. After about an hour of shooting through the ice at sunset this evening, I came up with a handful of images. It was tough picking just one. Included in the ice are:
- Exposed X-Ray film
- Microfiche
- Metallic cupcake sprinkles
- Colored sugar crystals
- Ginger Ale
Canon EOS REBEL T2i, Sigma 105mm 2.8 macro lens, ISO 400, 1/200 at f/45
-Thomas Ricci
Ice and Lights
I froze two reindeer ornaments in a pyrex dish and and back lit the block of ice with white X-mas lights while the block was wedged between the window and the pane. The photo was shot with a Nikon D3000 with a 52mm L37 Lens on at F8 on bulb.
-Onile Thomson
Eureka
I spent a few hours Sunday attempting to "filter" my shots with a homemade thin sheet of ice. Unfortunately the ice was cloudy and each shot was more disappointing than the last. In an act of desperation, I rinsed the ice under warm water hoping to wash away the impurities. I was a little too overzealous and ended up with a hole in the ice sheet. *Eureka* Why not use the hole to my advantage? As you can see, the end result (not edited or touched up at all) really draws the eye to the light, but I feel that in the peripheral you can still make out the yellowish lights from the highway and the "cleaner" lights from the surrounding condo's. Nikon D90, 35mm f/1.8 DX @ f/4, 1/25 sec, ISO 1600
- Adam Biesenthal
Curious Ice Kitten
I had many challenges for this one.
1. Precious little time to execute (it IS the most wonderful time of the year)
2. I live in Central Texas - had to make my ice and only had one round in the freezer. I now know what I'd do to make it better, but the process I liked best was freezing the water with crushed tin foil on it. Lovely texture!
3. I planned to picture holly through the ice. It was OK...But then I loved the psychedelic effect I got with the Christmas lights through the ice. However, in the end...my kitten was VERY curious about what I was up to, and that was what I captured last and then decided to use.
-Karen Tarlow
On Dasher
This weeks challenge was easy and hard. Easy? Shoot a picture through ice. Hard? Shoot a good picture through ice, with just enough blur and distortion. Easy? Make an Ice filter. Hard? Make a good ice filter you can see through. First, I searched the net for the best way to make clear ice. I came up with three different ways. Boiled water, filtered water, and distilled water.
I used all three methods of making ice filters, but in the end (for me) they all came out with pretty much the same clarity. I tried boiling the water and made two different filters. One was an inch of water on a non-stick cookie sheet (the best). The second was a piece of glass on a cookie sheet covered in water (the worst). The third was a UV and a crystal cross filter filled with distilled water (marginal results).
Then I went out and shot backup pictures. I always shoot backup pictures just in case my creative ideas crash and burn. I shot beautiful photos of ice crystals, icicles, frozen waterfalls with a double rainbow, and even golden trout swimming under a thin sheet of ice in a local lake. But were these photos through a lens with an ice filter? NO, they were not. So I didn't use the beautiful photos. Instead I chose the blurry photos shot through the cookie sheet of ice.
"On Dasher" was shot at a local legend at Christmas time. With over 250,000 Christmas lights and a Mongolian Camel, in Hansen, Idaho. I used my trusty Canon T1i Rebel with the 18-55mm lens at 29mm. Exposure was 1.0 at f/6.3, ISO 100, with a tripod.
-Ron Barrett
Moonlit Crystals
The unique hours of my job insure that i get to start my day in the coldest, darkest hours of the day. While starting my car this past week I had noticed the crystal formations on the windshield due to the very cold but very dry weather we have had recently. combine that with the full moon this week as well as Giz's photo-challenge and i had the idea for a macro shot of the crystals with the moon in my composition. Canon 60D, 24-105mm f/4 L , 20 sec, ISO 800, f/16 @105mm, 14mm macro extension tube.
- Micah Rydman
Iceset
This contest came at a perfect time, since it was announced the night before it snowed in New Hampshire. I found some nice ice sheets on top of a trash can, but in the end they were too chunky to see anything through, so I used a sheet that I made in the freezer. I went out shooting as the sun was starting to go down - around 3:30pm. Most of what made it through the ice filter was just colors and general shapes. After taking a bunch of photos on the nearby golf course, I chose this one, because I like how through the ice you can see the continuation of the landscape with the five color layers of snow, trees, sunset, clouds, and sky. I used a Sony DSC-H20.
-Leah Nicolich-Henkin
His Name Is Not Greg
Well I didn't think I'd get to enter this weeks challenge, since the Temp's have been hovering in the high 50's. But last night they got more seasonal and retreated into the 20's... and I had all but forgotten about the challenge until my friend ( Whose real name is NOT Greg ) strolled up with a large flat and thin piece of Ice. So I grabbed the G-12 and had him hold it up in front of his more or less, once chiseled features. And Wa La...a bit of abstraction. The Picture was shot with a Canon Power Shot G-12... at F:4 at 1,000th sec. The ISO was 100 and the Focal Length was 6 mm.
- Charlie Carroll
Snowball
People though I was snooping around someone's car when taking this photo. I was in the middle of the parking lot and pointing a camera into the driver's side window. I got a lot of strange looks, but no one could see the tiny little snowflake resting on the frozen-over window of my vehicle. Looking at the original, the ice filter just didn't look right so with the help of photoshop, I used the glass distort filter to get the right effect. Canon EOS 5D Mark II, ISO 800, 1/60s, Lensbaby Fisheye Optic
- Daniel Jang
Frozen Flower
After much experimenting with techniques and subject matter, I decided to take photos of flowers through a sheet of ice to juxtapose life and death. I made a thin sheet of ice using the baking pan in the freezer method. This photo was taken with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel, EF-S 18-55mm lens, 1/250 exposure, f11.
-Jamie Babbitt
Fantastic shots this week, many of which will be perfect desktop backgrounds (which, as we all know, is the ultimate photographic compliment.) They're on flickr if you want 'em.
Mark Wilson is the founder of Philanthroper, a site that lets you donate $1-$10 to a new nonprofit every day.