At 14 feet tall, this Statue of Liberty was the largest ice sculpture I'd worked on up to this point.



*updated 12/7/11

I’ll always remember a big mistake I made that taught me something about ice and light. While I was working on the Statue of Liberty sculpture above in Belgium (it was in a giant tent kept at below freezing), I remember being very happy with how the face was looking. The back of the sculpture was still snowy and rough, and although I didn’t realize it, it was acting as a diffuser for the light coming through the sculpture. It was scattering and toning down the harsh light that was aimed at the back of the sculpture.

Unfortunately, towards the end of carving this piece, I took a large torch to the sculpture to get rid of the snow and tool marks. I didn’t spare the back of the sculpture and I glassed the entire piece. When I looked at the face again, I was surprised at how different it looked. A lot more light was coming through from the back of the sculpture and it was overpowering the delicate work that I had done on the face. I didn’t have much control over the lighting at the event, but I did have control over my sculpture. In the end, I wished that I hadn’t “cleaned up” the back of the sculpture because I ended up with a sculpture that was much less photogenic. I suppose I could have gone back and roughed up the back of the sculpture, but I was nearing the end of my available carving time and that would not be a trivial task given that the sculpture was about 14 feet tall. I learned a valuable lesson about ice sculpture photography that day.



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Tags: Bruges, Belgium, Statue of Liberty, lighting