Shrek the Halls
I went out to Gaylord Palms ICE! on Tuesday. It’s best for me to hit this thing early before it gets too crowded. Not only do the prices go up for peak times, but so does the hassle factor. I like to take pictures and it’s pretty dark in there for photography; not to mention cold at 9 degrees. Dim light means you have to do one of three things:
- Raise your ISO (creates noisy pictures)
- Use flash (ruins the atmosphere of the place)
- Use a tripod (winner)
That’s right, a lugged a tripod out there to get my pictures. Everyone else walked around with a cell phone camera or a small point & shoot with a flash. Most folks just wanted to pose in front of the ice carvings, snap a shot (which it seems to take them far too long to do), and then move along. Not me. I’m the only dude out there setting up a DSLR on a tripod with a shutter release, taking brackets of 5 different exposures. One of them has to turn out, right? At least that’s what I keep telling myself.
The nice thing about a tripod is that you get a clean shot with the ambient light. The downside is that it takes time to make that shot; time spent waiting on a seemingly endless crowd meandering through popping their little cell phone flashes about, generally right in front of my camera which somehow seems invisible.
That’s OK, though. They have just as much right to be there as I do. I run into this kind of thing all the time and I know how to handle it – with patience. I have it, they don’t. That means they’ll scurry along to the next scene soon enough. I just have to watch the ebb & flow between crowds and take my shots when the place is empty. Like I said, I do it all the time. The difference here is that it’s 9 DEGREES! Patience is much more difficult in the cold. Especially when one of those groups decides to stop in that archway and have a conversion while my big ass is sitting on the floor with a camera and a tripod waiting for them to get out of the way.
In any case, I eventually got my shots because they eventually moved. My ass was numb, but I’ve heard that we must suffer for our art. I’ve suffered to bring you this photo, and many more than I’m not posting yet.
Speaking of suffering, they have sound clips from the movie playing repeatedly in the different rooms. Most folks only hear them once, because they move along before it replays. I heard them about a dozen times. They haunt me in my sleep now, especially that creepy exclamation of “SEASON’S GREETINGS!” Did I mention that I suffered for my art?