Nate,
Great questions
And I'd like to see others answer them as well.
For my part ...
natskis wrote:Photo 2: Wow! What a pose, what a smile, what a subject and what an amazing costume!
Small thing, her right hand is streaking.
This is subjective of course, would the shot be better having the shutter firing quicker to eliminate that?
Or is that part and parcel of capturing motion in events? What amount of streaking in action shots is good and bad?
What about the floodlights on the right hand side?
Would there be concideration about taking them out or at least diminishing their brightness?
My eye is lead away to the lights because they're bright after viewing the very beautiful lady
Again these might be subjective and as a newbie, I'm wondering what people's thoughts would be as to what could be more correct?
Let's deal with what's "correct" first of all, because that's the easiest: Everything is correct, and nothing is wrong.
The real issue is, as the photographer, what is the message that you're trying to convey with these images? And that leads us back to the rest of your questions.
Yes, using a faster shutter speed would help remove the element of movement, but is that desirable? For the answer, see above.
For me, Carnivale is all about movement, action, colour, perhaps decadence ... life! And I think that by leaving the element of movement in this image, it is enhanced as a result. using a higher shutter speed may stop that action, but it might also turn your image from a very lively image into one that's static. The end result is the one that you, as the photographer, decide is the one that gives you what you want.
The lights ... again, for me that's a part of the scene, and that's fine. I've seen images where people clone out this sort of thing; that's a valid technique, but it's not the sort of thing that I'd be likely to do. At some point we need to accept that when we're shooting these sorts of images, the backgrounds cannot and will not be clinical and "perfect", whatever that might mean. We need to just learn to deal with it; it is ok.
Again, for this image, I think it helps establish the atmosphere, and that is a large part of what Wendell has captured here.
And you ask what amount of streaking etc is acceptable in an image. I would tend towards the concept of less being better, but where appropriate, some is good. There's no hard and fast rules, and as I said at the start, the concept of "correct" simply does not apply.
If you're the photographer, and you're happy (or your clients on a commercial shoot), then what else matters?