Carnival. The fun holiday that Brazilians take seriously.

Carnival means a livelihood for the multi-million dollar tourist industry, and for the artisans that create parade floats and revelers’ costumes. It means 90 minutes of glory for thousands of slum dwellers parading in Rio’s Sambadrome, and five days of non-stop partying for millions of revelers, foreign and national.

And it means a lot of work for us photographers, even though it looks like so much fun.

As with many things in life, the first time covering Carnival is the best. The novelty of that first immersion in Rio’s parade of samba schools combines with the grandeur and opulence to neutralize the fatigue of working two consecutive nights with little sleep in-between.

It’s like being jet lagged in paradise.

Paradise in this case is seven blocks long and populated by innumerable figures and personalities - animal, vegetable and mineral. The side-by-side existence of the most gut-wrenching to the most frivolous samba school themes, is startling. Themes at this year’s parade ranged from the Portuguese colonization of Brazil, the origins of life and the Spanish Inquisition, to the trauma of birth and the Kama Sutra.

Even after having covered several Carnivals, we photographers still get so caught up in the expectation of the looming parade that we inevitably over-photograph the first school. Then just as we settle in to a sustainable rhythm that should carry us through both nights to a well-edited, worthy picture file, fatigue sets in and we begin to fade towards daybreak.

I still remember the last minutes of the 2003 parade. A dozen flawlessly-choreographed skeletons from the Imperatriz school danced arm-in-arm to a samba that still echoes in my head. Perfectly programmed to hit the runway as the day was dawning and my mind was waning, I was so thrilled that I ran to file half a dozen pictures just of them. A clear overfile, in retrospect.

Photographers trek from dusk to dawn up and down the long Sambadrome floor, weaving in and out of the dancers that leave us no room and make no concessions. We attempt to capture the parade’s magnificence and meaning, and avoid being mauled and mangled by the contraptions they wear. It isn’t easy.

The most recurring theme during my four Carnivals has been the Amazon rain forest, with variations on global warming and deforestation in the form of protest. Themes that are tied to current events are wonderful for us, as the interest reaches a wider audience.

This year’s recurring theme was the 100^th anniversary of the first Japanese immigration to Brazil. Interest in Japan made it easier to file more pictures than usual.

A storm was generated by the Viradouro school’s float depicting a pile of twisted bodies of Holocaust victims, meant to show how evil mankind can be. A judge banned the float by court order after Reuters published pictures of it a few days before the parade. For journalists, that kind of controversy breathes new life into an annual event, making a repetitive story interesting all over again.

This year, my fourth at the Rio parade, was by far my hardest. The fatigue set in earlier and I sensed fewer of those magic moments that make the event easy to photograph. My paradise was lost, but I was still jet lagged.

Reuters’ Carnival veteran Sergio Moraes admirably covered the parade from start to finish with all the walking involved and hours spent shooting from a ladder chained to the perimeter, without announcing with bells or whistles that this was his 20^th parade. Twenty years of jet lag.

I asked Sergio what it was like covering the world’s biggest party for the 20^th time and his answer was anything but surprising. “The hardest thing is to find a different picture.”

(more 2008 Carnival pictures here)