It was 50 degrees and climbing this morning when I headed to Lititz, which has been called the coolest small town in America. The Fire & Ice Festival begins tonight and I wanted to watch them carve the ice sculptures and take some photos.

As usual I got there way too early but eventually they began to massacre the blocks of ice with chainsaws, then use other tools to chisel out amazing detail. There was a large ice chair, a John Deere tractor and this one which will be a newspaper boy.

In hindsight I should have paid more attention to the background, used a very wide aperture, shot in manual and got closer ignoring the ice chips shooting everywhere. I knew they would be carving 72 more sculptures but I had no intention of waiting.

Being a perfectionist bordering on obsessive (see blog name) I have to learn to enjoy the experience, good photo, bad photo or no photo. Author Edmond Mbiaka wrote: “When it comes to perfection, the most that we could possibly do is to continuously push closer and closer to it. It is truly something to aim at, just to see how close you could get to it.”

I knew I should have got closer!