An Evening On The Town

It is that time of the year when downtown Springfield main street is decorated with Christmas lights and a Christmas tree. Twice a week, Wednesday and Saturday evenings, until right before Christmas, the shops around downtown stay open, encouraging people to come and shop for the holidays. 

It's been a tradition for several years, among a few of us photographer friends, to go downtown, at least once during this time of the year to photograph the decorations and the lights. Mind you year after year the photos look almost alike to the previous year, but hey who can resist shooting some lights.

This year there is an extra incentive for photographing the area, the incentive being a newly constructed, temporary, ice skating rink, placed right in front of the Old State Capitol.

The ice skating rink was launched by this year's Sangamon CEO class. A little background is probably needed before I post some of the photos I took.

"Sangamon CEO, Creating Entrepreneurial Opportunities, is a joint effort between local businesses and school districts. 

The program is open to all high school seniors in the Sangamon County. 

It is a competitive application process where students apply during the spring semester of their junior year. Students who are accepted participate in real-world  experiences that utilize their learning to create an actual business. The class meets Monday – Friday from 7:30 am to 9:00 am, at local businesses where the business owners share their knowledge and experiences. From their learning, students create business, marketing plans, financial projections, logos and brands which they present to bankers. Students then market their businesses, and sell their products or services at a local trade show.

The program is an accredited, dual credit, high school course that allows students to experience the challenges and rewards of running a business." 

The synthetic ice is made of polymer sheet material made from polyethylene plastic and comes in solid panels which are then connected together using various methods. The glide of the synthetic ice is 90% as smooth as on real ice.

In order to keep up with traditions, on the warmest evening of the season, a couple of us ventured downtown to admire, click, and have a "jolly ol' time".

 

 

By the way that is Elvis performing in this store. They guy above was mesmerized by the performance. I really wanted to get a nice close up photo of Elvis to show you how good he looks after all these years, but unfortunately this is all I got.

Don't ask me why I took the following photos. At the time it seemed like the right thing to do. After all they do fall in the "light" category.🙄

 

If you paid close attention to the photos, you will have noticed, while there are quite a bit of holiday decorations around, we do have a slight problem........many of the street lights are not working. Well.....that's how we operate around here, a little of this and a LOT of that 😉😏