Am I just (un?)lucky all of the sudden or are there fewer dragon attacks happening since patch 1.5? I've been fast traveling like crazy even trying to make one show up and no luck. It's actually an issue now because I need the souls to unlock some shouts.

i've noticed this as well and I am in the same situation lol but I have been facing less dragons than usual....

Every time my level 74 character fast travels anywhere but in a city a dragon turns up, so no I have yet to notice less dragons. My second character never bothered progressing to waking most of the things up, and my much weaker level 15 character is already being annoyed by the wretched things.

I noticed an increase on my younger character and a decrease on my older character. Thankful for the latter, I think I was up to 48 Dragon Souls :S

Everything just seems completely random in Skyrim. Some things are more frequent on one char compared to another for myself. Which I suppose can be seen as a good thing, or a bad thing.

I have collected 115 dragon souls with my first character and some dragons did not give a soul they were so tired of me killing them for bounty quests. In the end I stopped asking for jobs.
And STILL my character is being chased all over Skyrim by the silly things. Next up the Blades are going hunting, I hope that decreases the frequency of dragons appearing a bit.

Just a little bit, I still see Dragons constantly. But not as constantly. If they changed the spawn rate I'm fine with it, considering that if you fought 3 dragons in Dawnstar at the same time, then leave for Markarth and fight 2-4 dragons on the way. Then dragons spawn too quickly.

Ok this is good to hear, I was getting worried. I play 10 characters at the same time, alternating between them. Usually I would expect to face one dragon per character per session. I went through 7 characters since the patch before seeing a dragon and that was only because I saved during a dragon attack the previous time with that character.

Are you using a horse, you try the mounted combat you are bound to get more dragons.