When I arrived crews were on hand putting the finishing touches on the ice surface and I got a short lesson in how it's done which is, I learned, a complicated task requiring skill and patience. And if you mess up you'll hear about it. An interesting thing is that at the start of the curling season the rocks are no where in sight - they are missing in this photo.
When the ice has had it's final flooding (which had just occurred when this photo was taken - that's a thin layer of water over the frozen sub-base) and the top coat of water has frozen only then are the rocks brought forward. But they cannot be placed on the ice because they are at room temperature and would melt into the carefully prepared ice surface. Instead, they are placed on snow fencing acting as a carpet allowing air to circulate all around the rocks for at least 10 hours. After 10 hours the rocks are frozen and only then can they be put onto the ice surface for the start of another curling season.
Canon 1Dx with Canon 17mm TSE lens; ISO 200, 1/5 second exposure at f/11. Multiple image capture with RAW files edited in Adobe Lightroom. Final image made by merging top and bottom half of the image in Adobe Photoshop. Final edits also made in Photoshop.
Special thanks to the staff at the Glen Allan Recreation Centre for facilitating this photo shoot. Hurry! Hard!
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