[cerebis]

April 23, 2011 at 10:56 am

You’ve motivated me to do a bit of tweaking to the image, and I’ve included the new version below.

venice-girl by marcdaly101, on Flickr

[cerebis]

April 23, 2011 at 9:35 am

Definitely John, and I’ll give a little background on how and where they were taken to back you up :)

The shot of the little girl was taken in quite significant shade, while she (and her family) were posing in the covered shopping walkway that surrounds San Marco square. I was using a 50 mm lens at 1.4, focused on the littlest one of the group of four. This is actually only a quarter of the full shot, due to the framing limitations of the prime lens, and the crush of other photographers around me :) There was no direct sunlight at all on the girl, and I luckily managed to avoid taking the shot while someone else’s flash was firing.

In completely the opposite lighting circumstances, the old gentleman was passing by (ever so slowly) in the tightly packed crowd in the centre of San Marco square. He was kind enough to stop for a couple of seconds for me after already being waylaid by another photographer, and I grabbed two shots. My main aim was to isolate him from his surroundings and capture his great, lived in, yet full of life, expression. As you’ve mentioned John, the sun was indeed beating down (or at least sideways), giving harsh lighting, but it give me a clean background I didn’t need to work on :)

In general, I’ve never seen so many photographers in one place, and certainly that amount of top end photographic equipment. The shooting experience I could only compare to being a paparazzi, rabid groups of photographers gathering around a particularly colourful subject, jostling for position, hissing at a colleague who wanders into shot. It was hectic, but the number of people who were happily and politely posing for us all was just fantastic, and the sheer effort many of them had put in to their costumes was very impressive. I would recommend a trip to Venice during Carnevale to anyone.

[cerebis]

April 23, 2011 at 1:03 am

Thanks Dee, and totally agree about the distracting details in the background. Apart from a very tight crop from the original group shot, I haven’t edited this particular shot. Since I’ve finally edited the other 350 images from my trip, it’s definitely time to return to this shot.