Montreal Snow Village Ice Hotel

For Christmas, my girlfriend and I were given a voucher to visit to the Montreal Snow Village.  It was given with the instructions that I take lots of pictures.  I've been looking forward to the visit since we got the tickets, but due to differences in schedules, we were never able to find the time to actually visit the place.  Until this past Thursday.  Upon arrival at the site, I was a little bit worried as it looked like it was just a bunch of igloo's joined together.  My worries were soon eased after entering the main room.  It's inside the rooms of this giant ice hotel where all of the treasures are hidden.  Several of the rooms have giant ice carvings in the wall and the main theme was New York.  The light in the rooms was rather low, so it was a good thing that I decided to bring my tripod along.  I was able to take a few handheld shots as well as some rooms were better lit than others.  It was also a good thing that our visit took place on a Thursday night when the Canadiens were playing.  That resulted in there being very few people on the site, meaning less people to be bothered by my tripod and long picture taking times.  The first shot we see here is in the main hall of the ice hotel.  It was shot handheld at f/4, 1/80sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  The second shot was in a room with the New York Aquarium as a theme.  I don't know about you, but I can't see myself trying to fall asleep while a giant shark is waiting to swallow me whole to my left.  The blue lighting was perfectly done, but was a little to dark to be shot without the tripod.  This one was shot at f/6.3, 2sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  Shot number three was in a room that had a New York Taxi cab theme.  I loved the taxi cab that was carved into the wall, along with the traffic light.  In my experience, though, it would have been a little more funny had the traffic light been yellow, or even red.  I'm sure we've all had such experiences with taxi drivers here at home, though I suppose that it's possible that those in New York follow the rules of the road a little more closely.  I wanted to create a star effect in the headlights of the taxi cab, so I pulled out the tripod again for a long exposure.  This image was shot at f/6.3, 3sec, ISO 100  at 24mm.  The final image is the one that I considered to be, hands down, the best one of all.  It's a carving of King Kong swatting away air planes over the New York skyline.  I ended up on the ground after doing a bad double-lutz attempt on the icy floor and trying to find a way to fall without landing on my camera, but despite this, I must have taken about 20 photographs in this room alone.  This shot was taken at f/4, 1/25sec, ISO 100 at 24mm.  I had a great time at the Ice Hotel, and if you find yourself with some time to spend, it's worth paying a visit to the site.  I took lots of shots in other room as well so you can expect to see some updates made to this page as time goes by.