A few weeks ago I went to have din­ner with some friends at the Pom­mery ice restau­rant in the brand new Snow Vil­lage in Mon­treal on Ile Sainte-Helene. The food was quite good but my butt was way cold even though I was wear­ing long under­wear. I rec­om­mend thick snow pants if you want to check out the restau­rant and have din­ner. Be pre­pared to spend some cash because it’s not cheap, but it IS quite an expe­ri­ence though and I do rec­om­mend it.

It’s the first year they put this sea­sonal vil­lage together and it’s made com­pletely of ice and snow. It includes a hotel, chapel, bar and restau­rant all made out of ice and snow — way cool if you like the cold. The icy sculp­tural decor is a really nice touch and the over­all com­bi­na­tion of ice, snow and light is a won­der­ful sen­sory expe­ri­ence. Because I went with friends I couldn’t take as many pic­tures as I wanted but we did take a good look around and the vil­lage is stun­ning. I hope to go back before the vil­lage melts and take some more shots.

This past week­end I went to Ottawa Ontario, Canada’s cap­i­tal. I really enjoy vis­it­ing Ottawa as there’s always lots to see and the city is fairly easy to get around in. I went to visit some fam­ily and of course while I was there I was going to shoot the city at night. This week­end also hap­pened to be Win­ter­lude in Ottawa so there were lots of activ­i­ties and lots of pho­to­graphic opportunities.

As always, there’s way too much to shoot and never enough time to shoot it all. When this hap­pens, I have to make tough choices and this time I decided to focus on a clas­sic, and some­thing new. The clas­sic is the Rideau Canal which is the longest/largest skat­ing rink on planet Earth. It cuts through the down­town core of Ottawa and is close to 8 kilo­me­ters in length. It’s one of my favorite places to hang out in the win­ter­time in Ottawa.

Here are two images that are sim­i­lar — I’d be curi­ous to know which one peo­ple prefer.

This is the Rideau Canal in Ottawa, Canada with the par­lia­ment build­ings in the background

This next image high­lights the right side of the canal.

This angle high­lights the right side of the canal with gov­ern­ment build­ings in the background

After I shot the canal I went to Con­fed­er­a­tion Park to Catch part of  Win­ter­lude but I was stopped dead in my tracks by the FABULOUS lights of the new Rink of Dreams right next to City Hall. Skat­ing and Hockey are such a part of being Cana­dian and I just hung around the rink while par­ents and kids skated. I took some decent shots of peo­ple for a good 20 min­utes when some­thing mag­i­cal hap­pened. Every­one left the ice because the Zam­boni (ice clean­ing machine) had ice to clean.

As the Zam­boni started clean­ing the ice, the city’s reflec­tion in the ice became more and more promi­nent. I thought it added a cool layer to the scene so even though I nor­mally like peo­ple in my scenes — the empty rink really added some­thing for me. I could imag­ine par­ents and kids dream­ing about being skat­ing stars or hockey stars. Ottawa Rocks!

This image was taken at about 6:15 pm. I really dig the rink’s colours, the city light reflec­tions and of course, the Zamboni.