Carnival

Here in Brazil many Samba scholls are preparing to walk the carnival, in Sao Paulo is no different, I went to one of those taining days and shot a few pictures. This one I liked a bit because I could put the two dancers in the same scene and the beautiful smile of the girl helped too.
I underexposed the image a bit so the background which had some highlights went darker and didnt steal the scene.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4005/...6b4ba87b_o.jpg

It's a lively shot for sure JL!

For me the treatment just about takes this out of the photography realm and makes this more of a mixed media image.

Still i can comment a bit - I'm not too crazy about seeing so much of the man's backside. In general, it's something that I try to avoid. Had we seen his face in profile, it would be different.

The treatment obscures an important element for me; that is the connection of the hands on the two main subjects.

Hope that helps - Marko

I love the vibrancy and sense of motion here, JL.

The treatment does not work for me. There are too many elements going on in the background.

I like some things about this photo and some I don't.

I like the composition. I'm going against Marko's viewpoint this time because I like that I can't see the man's face. My reason is because it makes me look to see where he is looking and I see a lovely girl with a bright smile on her face, having fun dancing. I do understand, and often agree with Marko that seeing a face is usually preferable though.

The background has a lot of distractions but I guess that's unavoidable in this case. I'd have preferred to put up with a bit more brightness to see a bit more detail I think.

I think I would have blurred out mnore of the background dancers to make the main couple stand out more.

This kind of goes out the photography realm and looks more like a painting to me. There seems to be a lot going on in the image so my eye finds it a bit hard to focus on one thing. The 2 green dots to the right and the bright shirts of the 2 men on the right of the image seem to be a distraction to my eye which goes right to them instead of to the main focus...the woman with the smile.. I do like the smile on the woman though and the blue of the man's shirt...2 nice bright images but on the whole I find the image a bit too much. :twocents:

Thanks all for the comments =)