Today was the last day of the Venice Carnival. The city will seem like a very different place without seeing people dressed up in various costumes covering the whole gamet from hilarious to outragious, surreal or just plain exquisite. It felt like only yesterday that I was cooing along with everyone else at the spectacle of the flight of the angel and yet here we were today gathered again in St. Mark’s Square to witness the Flight of the Lion – the official closing event of the carnival involving a huge flag unfurled over St Mark’s Square; patriotic music and much ticker tape. Just as the ceremony finished the wind picked up and it felt that a storm was coming in – which seemed a fitting end, as if it was blowing away the carnival.

Before calling it a wrap I took some atmospheric shots without flash to capture the mysterious nature of the carnival at night. I caught a fleeting glance of a winged unicorn running along a piazza (these things tend to happen in Venice) and found the photographs that I took to be eerily beautiful, like paintings from a carnival of old. What do you think? Is it just my imagination or does the one featured look like an old, cracked oil painting?

And don’t think I’m totally through with the carnival just yet. I will be picking out my favourite pictures and posting them here to keep the spirit of it all alive for just a bit longer…