Title • Venice Carnival 2013 #3

One of the things I say to all my students is that as soon as they think they've nailed a shot they should start over and shoot the same thing again, but do something different: maybe switch from landscape to portrait, change the exposure, lens, depth of field, and so on. There are an infinite number of ways to shoot the same thing and it's unlikely that you'll hit upon the very best shot with your first frame.

And normally, this is advice that I follow myself. In this case though, I didn't. What I had in mind was a silhouette - this guy was wearing a fantastic costume, which I tried to offset against the early morning light on the bank of the Grand Canal - but I couldn't quite get the angle I wanted. I shot 60+ frames, but none of them were quite right, so I gave up.

What I should have done was try something different. I could have lit him (I had my flash and Rogue FlashBender with me), or I could have upped the exposure to capture the intricate details of his costume. I ended up doing neither.

Once I looked through the RAW files though I really wished I had - the silhouettes didn't work - so I decided to see if I could process it as though it had been lit. It took about three hours to get to the final image - a shot that could have been produced in around 1/200th of a second if I'd got the lighting right - but I think it was worth the effort.

Let me know what you think.