Harbin

Wild Horses

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harbin_International_Ice_and_Snow_Sculpture_Festival

Composite of five shots taken with my D300 and 50 mm f/1.4. Wasn’t able to get the framing right individually, so I put them together with Photoshop. Pretty impressed with the smallness of the grain even though I had the ISO cranked to 3200.

Snow Polar Bear

There’s something about this particular snow polar bear that seems strangely familiar.

Be sure to take a look at the people interacting with the ice polar bears in the foreground of the picture.

Snow Buddha

Harbin is cold during the day, and much colder at night… so cold that the battery in my DMC-GX7 gave up the ghost after only a few shots.

Thankfully, I had along my D300 with an MB-D10 battery pack attached. Had no shortage of juice with this setup.

The above picture was taken on an Oben CT-3510 Tripod with BB-0T Ball Head (very glad that I decided to go with a light and compact tripod), with a 50 mm f/1.4 attached and an ISO of 3200 (had it cranked-up because I was also attempting hand-held shots… emphasis on attempting).

Developing the shot in Lightroom was a bit of a challenge. The original came-out really orangish. I ended-up dialing back the Temp a lot, with decreases in Clarity and Vibrance as well.

I hope this captures something of the scale… I think he was something like 20 meters high, and seated on top a snow mountain that was even taller.