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Halloween Photos -
Part 1
The Roving
Photographer Stays Home
Halloween is a GREAT holiday for
photographers!
I can take
Halloween photos, fulfilling my roving photographer ambitions without
leaving my house.
Over the years, the object of my Halloween
photos has expanded. I used to just take pictures of my kids and
their friends in their costumes. Then, when they started carving
pumpkins, I had to have a record of that, as well.
As my kids grew, they started giving me
gifts for Halloween: a fog
machine, a ghastly
green eclectic skull, a lightning
and thunder machine, a recording of scary ghost and
goblin sounds. Each year, I'd add these pieces into a modest, but
effective, scary encounter for the neighborhood trick-or-treaters.
This year, 2008, I endeavored to go a step
further - I would photograph the neighborhood goblins unaware as
I opened my door to their mischievous endeavors.
First, let me take you through the fun of
making pumpkin photos, then on to photographing those innocent
tricksters.
Halloween
Photos of Pumpkins
What
color is your pumpkin?
You'd be surprised
at the number of answers to this question.
Let's try a few:
- Pumpkins are
orange. We all know that.
 But, what happens when you photograph a pumpkin and try
to keep it orange? The orange comes out well, but the interior
gets washed out in white and yellow - too much highlight for my taste.
Compare this to the same image in the left margin, with the exposure
altered via image editing software, mainly to reduce the highlight.
What you'll see is that because the highlights are blown (overexposed)
in the original, it was
not possible
to capture many intermediate colors between the orange outside and the
white inside, making for a
fairly flat image.
The upside to the exposure above is that you can see the whole pumpkins
and their surroundings. If that is what you are after, then the
blown highlights are a small price to play.
And, they certainly are fun pumpkins to look at.
- Pumpkins are
orange
and black.
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Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR @ 26mm,
ISO 400, 1s,
f/22
Underexposure yields a
flat, two-tone image. |
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These are the
colors of construction paper we used in grade school to
make
our pumpkin pictures.
Orange and
black works OK, or at least it is getting closer. Of
course, in these photos, the colors are backward from the black eyes on
orange pumpkins that we made in school.
I'm trying to archive a sense of drama by exposing for black and high
contrast.
But, compared to the picture above, this is even flatter.
It is really underexposed. If you look at this one compared to
the next version, below, you'll see a better exposure with more
range of color.
- For me, pumpkins
are orange, yellow, and black.
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Nikon D300, 18-200mm VR @ 26mm,
ISO 400,
10s, f/22
Good exposure separates skin, wall, and
interior.. |
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Looking at the examples on the left and below, these give the best
3-dimensional look. I don't want to see the shape of the pumpkin
- I want to see the carved artwork in all of its temporal glory.
I increased exposure by just over 3 stops, from 1 second to 10 seconds.
By increasing
my exposure, I've added distinction between the orange wall
of the pumpkin and the yellow, candle-lit interior. And, I've
managed to keep the outside skin black.
This is the effect that I have been after in these Halloween
photos. Let me know if it
works for you at my feedback
page.
If you are ready for more orange and black, and a few other ghoulish
colors,
check out Part 2 of the Halloween
photos,
where I introduce you to my attempts to photograph trick-or-treaters in
costume.
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