The Sand Dragon


I am the father of the Chinese Empire, the owner of the Yin-Yang world... Don't even dare to be afraid, as my soul only wants the respect that a celestial creature deserves. Don't even dare to be misconceived by the ill concepts of the western world, who put witches, dragons, elves, elementals, and thousands of other spiritually alive creatures into oblivion, or worse, into the realm of evil and dark matters...

Don't even dare to turn your eyes away from me, for I am your trasportation after death, and the eternal symbol of the natural world and its constant transformation...







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Photo taken at FIESA in Algoz - Portugal. Fiesa is an internationl sand sculptures festival, with absolutely amazing sand sculptures. This year's theme is related to ancient civilizations. There will be more photos from FIESA in the next months in my gallery.

Note: these photos were taken in quite tough conditions. I had no tripod and as you can see the illumination was very scarce, strategically placed in certain spots of the sculptures, leaving some portions of it in absolute darkness. I used a 1/8second exposure with f4.0 aperture (the lowest I could get before I had to use an excessively long exposure for handheld shooting), and to my surprise most of the results came out great. The image stabilization of my Minolta A2 certainly played a big part in the definition of this image. The famous only-shoot-after-exhaling-technique also worked a treat in this situation!