Fear the dragon

[dante]

first post in seven months...

Here's an HDR shot from the recent ice sculpture festival at (always amazing) Lake Louise. It's late afternoon hence the color of the sky. I have trouble getting the color of the trees exactly right tho, they always tend to look a tad too blue in my opinion. What do you guys think?
(resampling the image to 250kb didn't do it any favors)

[Mad Aussie]

HDR often does throw in some extra bue to dark areas. Awesome looking ice sculpture! I quite like the composition. Maybe would have had the dragons head up in that sky a bit more perhaps.

[JAS_Photo]

Cool looking image! The Dungeons and Dragons crowd would go crazy for this. I quite like it and the colour pallet.

[asnow]

I like the way the dragon is against the mountain background. Like MA ... " Maybe would have had the dragons head up in that sky a bit more perhaps."

[Bambi]

I really like this shot. The light gives it a magical feel. Also, the lines of snow on the mountain almost look like it's the dragon's breath.

[dante]

Thanks all! I can see how the dragon facing the sky would make it stronger, but the sculptor would probably not allow me to fiddle with his work of art and I liked the background of lake louise to be horizontal. But, it's a good point!

[Iguanasan]

This is a very lovely shot but I think the other comments about being higher was not about moving the statue but about moving yourself. Had you ducked down a bit and to the left a bit you could have had that dragon head looking like it was blowing fire by using the centre blown out portion of the sky. No need to change the angle of the dragon head. Of course, you would not have had the ground in the shot at all unless you were shooting quite wide. I think the detail of that dragon would have let it stand on it's own.

The background, while interesting and helping to provide a sense of location, actually kind of detracts from the dragon for me. I keep looking down and away from the fine sculpture. I think this really should have been two separate images.

[asnow]

Thanks for explaining Iggy. That's exactly what I meant.