We had never thought of attending the Venice Carnival until someone at the Whitby Goth weekend made the suggestion. So, off we went for the duration. It was a success. Photography was difficult because of the number of spectators and photographers around each and every masked person. The elbow was more important than the lens... This was survival of the rudest.
I have never been to an event with so many photographers - ordinary people with point-and-shoots and flocks of those with 'white lenses'. However, I was surprised by how unfriendly fellow photographers were ... if ever I chatted to one I was invariably cold-shouldered. Im my experience this rather contrasts with the aviation community - when visiting new fields I have always found other pilots always willing to chat (invariably about near disasters).

Anyway, Venice is the most beautiful city in the world and the Carnival was quite magnificant. I can display only a tiny fraction of the images I took here - and, once again, I have crudely batched processed them. Now I'm back home I have a book to write and can't spend all my time processing images. The book is on computer design... not photography! Computer science is my day job and it pays for my cameras and travel.
Incidentally, we stayed at the Molino Stucky Hilton on Giudecca island (there's two complementary water buses an hour across to Zattere or San Marco). I had an excellent room and a great experience at this hotel. My room was far bigger than those I'd had when staying near San Marco in previous years - and - Giudecca is a largely tourist-free oasis of calm.