So I was lucky enough to be able to attend the Carnival in Rio de Janeiro this year, undoubtedly the highlight of which was my visit to the Sambódromo where the world famous carnival procession takes place for four nights of the carnival week.
Let me start by saying that it was an incredible experience, and something everyone should try and do at least once in their lives. The floats are stunning, the women beautiful in their elaborate costumes and sensual Samba moves, and the pulsating samba whips the crowds up into a frenzy, with everyone dancing, singing and waving flags for the whole 9 hours. We will certainly be going again.
Check out some videos, etc on YouTube (I will post links later on), but be warned, you cannot really get any sense of the music, or the grandiose of the event, as most of the clips are taken from camcorders.
The tickets were quite expensive, at around £180 per person, but got us seats in the middle of the procession, rather than the start, which is quite a bit cheaper, but with much worse views. The whole thing lasted about 9 hours, so at £20 an hour, offers good- value entertainment in my opinion.
We went on the Sunday night, which is the middle of the three 'judging' nights, and saw some of the biggest schools performing.
We were sat in the arquibanda (Sector 5), which is basically one of several very large grandstands with unallocated seating. The total capacity of the Sambódromo is about 60,000, with thousands more in the streets surrounding it enjoying the samba and trying to catch glimpses of the floats and dancers as they roll on and off the runway down the middle of the sambódromo.
The runway for the procession is about 700 metres long. Each school (of which there are 6 per night) gets one hour to get all their floats and dancers through the 'start' gates. They then have an additional 20 minutes to close the 'end' gates at the other end of the runway and have all their dancers and floats through, so each school's performance lasts around 70-80 minutes. A school will typically have about half a dozen large floats, maybe a couple of smaller floats, and ten or so groups of dancers, intersected with the porta-bandera (Flag Carriers) and batteria (Drummers). The batteria stop in front of each stand and perform a drum piece, and this is when the atmosphere around you becomes the most intense.
We got there about 7:45 (About 2:30 hrs before the parade starts) and still found that our sector was over half- full, meaning we were quite a way back and quite high up. The views though, were excellent, but quite annoying to take photographs for a number of reasons:
1) It was quite dark and I shot at over ISO 1000 (1250 most of the time) for the whole thing, luckily the noise was not as bad as I feared. I did lose a few good photos due to blur though, as I was still shooting at quite low shutter speeds
2) The dancers (esp. the women in the feathery costumes) tended to dance almost exclusively at the TV/ press cameras or the more expensive boxes opposite us. Rarely did they turn to face the arquibandas, hence the lack of decent shots of them.
3) There were a number of speakers and lighting rigs placed at 15- or- so metre intervals along the front of the grandstands which meant lost loads of shooting opportunities as they were frequently right in the way. Heads, flags, hands, etc were also a major source of photo- loss.
In addition, I only took a single lens (Nikon 70-300 VR), and wish I could have taken at least my 50mm and 10-20mm as well. However, changing lenses would have been a major pain, and resulted in missed ops. Also they might have gotten broken from all the movement of people around us. The best thing if one has the budget is to take two cameras with different lenses fitted. Annoyingly this means I don't have any sweeping views or pictures of entire floats.
For next time I would:
Due to the long processing time, I have just a few here. they aren't necessarily the best I took, but are just the ones I started processing first. If people like them, I will add more.
Most of them involve some quite heavy cloning, healing, and blurring to get rid of other dancer's peripherals, speakers, cameras, people's heads, hands, etc. I also had to run most of them through a noise reduction filter, so they have gone a little soft.
Let me start by saying that it was an incredible experience, and something everyone should try and do at least once in their lives. The floats are stunning, the women beautiful in their elaborate costumes and sensual Samba moves, and the pulsating samba whips the crowds up into a frenzy, with everyone dancing, singing and waving flags for the whole 9 hours. We will certainly be going again.
Check out some videos, etc on YouTube (I will post links later on), but be warned, you cannot really get any sense of the music, or the grandiose of the event, as most of the clips are taken from camcorders.
The tickets were quite expensive, at around £180 per person, but got us seats in the middle of the procession, rather than the start, which is quite a bit cheaper, but with much worse views. The whole thing lasted about 9 hours, so at £20 an hour, offers good- value entertainment in my opinion.
We went on the Sunday night, which is the middle of the three 'judging' nights, and saw some of the biggest schools performing.
We were sat in the arquibanda (Sector 5), which is basically one of several very large grandstands with unallocated seating. The total capacity of the Sambódromo is about 60,000, with thousands more in the streets surrounding it enjoying the samba and trying to catch glimpses of the floats and dancers as they roll on and off the runway down the middle of the sambódromo.
The runway for the procession is about 700 metres long. Each school (of which there are 6 per night) gets one hour to get all their floats and dancers through the 'start' gates. They then have an additional 20 minutes to close the 'end' gates at the other end of the runway and have all their dancers and floats through, so each school's performance lasts around 70-80 minutes. A school will typically have about half a dozen large floats, maybe a couple of smaller floats, and ten or so groups of dancers, intersected with the porta-bandera (Flag Carriers) and batteria (Drummers). The batteria stop in front of each stand and perform a drum piece, and this is when the atmosphere around you becomes the most intense.
We got there about 7:45 (About 2:30 hrs before the parade starts) and still found that our sector was over half- full, meaning we were quite a way back and quite high up. The views though, were excellent, but quite annoying to take photographs for a number of reasons:
1) It was quite dark and I shot at over ISO 1000 (1250 most of the time) for the whole thing, luckily the noise was not as bad as I feared. I did lose a few good photos due to blur though, as I was still shooting at quite low shutter speeds
2) The dancers (esp. the women in the feathery costumes) tended to dance almost exclusively at the TV/ press cameras or the more expensive boxes opposite us. Rarely did they turn to face the arquibandas, hence the lack of decent shots of them.
3) There were a number of speakers and lighting rigs placed at 15- or- so metre intervals along the front of the grandstands which meant lost loads of shooting opportunities as they were frequently right in the way. Heads, flags, hands, etc were also a major source of photo- loss.
In addition, I only took a single lens (Nikon 70-300 VR), and wish I could have taken at least my 50mm and 10-20mm as well. However, changing lenses would have been a major pain, and resulted in missed ops. Also they might have gotten broken from all the movement of people around us. The best thing if one has the budget is to take two cameras with different lenses fitted. Annoyingly this means I don't have any sweeping views or pictures of entire floats.
For next time I would:
- Arrive EARLY and get a seat at the front row, as it is the only place you can really get good photos due to the angles, heads, and the speaker things.
- Take a wide lens as well, as it's impossible to get the floats in shot without it.
- Take about 10Gb of memory and a spare battery
- Probably hire a faster lens, as the 70-300 VR is just not quite up to the job with it's f 5.7 at 300mm. I think the D80 is adequate though. 300mm is just about enough length from even half way up the arquibanda
- I also only took 4Gb of memory, and one battery, both of which was nowhere near enough.
Due to the long processing time, I have just a few here. they aren't necessarily the best I took, but are just the ones I started processing first. If people like them, I will add more.
Most of them involve some quite heavy cloning, healing, and blurring to get rid of other dancer's peripherals, speakers, cameras, people's heads, hands, etc. I also had to run most of them through a noise reduction filter, so they have gone a little soft.
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