Fall is my favourite time for photography! I love all of the colours in the fall palette! Along with fall comes Halloween and all of the photo opportunities surrounding this time of the year.
Pumpkins to Jack-o-lanterns
Leading up to Halloween I like to get photos of the children carving their pumpkins and what designs they come up with every year.
Lauren’s jack-o-lantern is always very creative and usually has a theme – The Walking Dead this year!
Grant deep in thought about what he will design this year!
Twins? He is trying to make the same face!
It is always fun to get a photo their masterpieces when they are finished.
I like to get photos in the dark and the daylight of our pumpkins.
And there is always fun to be had when they pose with their jack-o-lanterns!
One of my favourite jack-o-lantern shots is of Grant looking into the pumpkin and he is glowing like the inside of the pumpkin.
My settings to achieve this shot were f4.5 at 1/3 sec shutter speed, ISO 100. I used a tripod for this photo because at 1/3 of a second it would be very difficult to capture this hand held.
Staged Photos
I am not against grabbing a few staged photos before the big night. I find Halloween night so busy, trying to get supper, get the costumes on and have the treats ready for the trick or treaters. Usually the afternoon of Halloween I get the children to put their costumes on and we do a few photos in the yard. This saves me from getting cranky when they don’t want to pose for photos when they are excited and ready to head out the door to get CANDY!
Turn on your flash!
When the trick or treaters are leaving for the evening in the dark turn on the flash to get a good photo of them. It is just too difficult to capture that moment without your flash on!
This is one of my best ones without my flash. It is not bad but it is not great either. You get the idea of the costumes but they are bit blurry. The flash would definitely help this!
These ones are much better with the flash on!
Sometimes you get lucky though and get a fun effect when you turn your flash off and have a slow shutter speed.
Or are they ghosts?
Trick or Treaters
I like to get photos of the children in our neighbourhood because they are cousins and friends of our children. I recommend turning your flash on for these ones because they are in a hurry to get to the next house and aren’t going to stand still long!
And don’t forget our furry friends who like to dress up for treats too!
The Loot!
Get a photo of all of the candy at the end of the trick or treating!
Time to Play!
While my children are out Trick or Treating I usually have time between children arriving at the door so it is a fun chance to play with my camera.
I used my tripod and my zoom lens for this photo experiment. My settings were f4.5, 1.3 sec and 100 ISO. How I achieved this projector effect was by moving the zoom lens out or in depending on where you started from when you set up the photo. In the top photo the lights were on in the house so any point of light was also affected in the photo. I turned the lights out and tried again which gave a dark background.
Have fun with your Halloween photos and always have your camera ready for anything strange or spooky!
Happy Haunting!
Those are some great photos! Thanks for sharing with us!
Thank you Linda!