Dunedin's long, dark winter nights were made bright yesterday with jellyfish, penguins and boats aglow at the Dunedin Midwinter Carnival.
The theme extended beyond the ocean to any waterway, providing for the wide range of lanterns on display "celebrating the fascinating creatures above and below the surface", Miss Covell said.
Frogs and lily pads, eels and taniwha and paradise shelducks all radiated.
"It looks beautiful," Miss Covell said.
Workshop weekends became increasingly complex and lantern-making progressed from a simple jellyfish, to a fish, then a penguin and finally — the most difficult to create — a boat.
Thousands of people were expected at the family-friendly event.
The winter solstice celebrations at First Church, in Moray Pl, celebrated a theme of "Creatures of the Deep", Dunedin Midwinter Carnival publicist Jess Covell said.
The inside of the church was set up like a pond scene.
There were albatrosses, fish, whales, boats — "all sorts".
Up to 150 people attended each of the four sold-out weekend lantern-making workshops in the leadup to the annual event, she said.
Last night workshop attendees, and their creations, joined a procession around the church grounds, to focus some of the attention on the community lanterns, alongside the bigger items on display.
Tonight’s 6pm slot sold out on Thursday, Miss Covell said.