This year, we had at least two Halloween events happening around Rochester. There may have been more, but I know the folks involved in creating two events. I managed to shoot a few images at both.
It’s fun to photograph events and situations that are unusual and have unusual challenges from a photography point of view. Dark haunts count as challenging. How do we deal with existing light or how do we bring in light without changing the mood, or at best, enhancing the mood?
The History Center of Olmsted County put on a drive-through event. A large group of actors were set out along a gravel pathway through the back part of the History Center property where farm buildings and equipment dot the landscape. Appropriate costumes and make-up, lots of props, and the scary drive was ready for visitors.
And visitors they had! We arrived a little before closing time planning to drive through as the final vehicle of the night. Two hours later, we were finally at the starting point. It was a cool, windy night, but much better than some of the late October evenings we’ve seen in Rochester.
I planned to walk alongside the car and do the shoot from outside. This would let me shoot the car as well as the spooks, put it in perspective, and provide a documentary feel to the photos. Now, what about lighting?
When I asked about how the area would be lit, the response was a few lights from the buildings plus the vehicle headlights. That’s not a lot to work with for photography and doesn’t provide any control to let me highlight the various actors, make-up, costumes, etc.
One thought was to use an external flash, maybe gel’d, and try to simulate headlights. I then came up with the idea to use a powerful flashlight to do this. We could keep it down sort of at headlight height, it would have a similar color temperature as headlights, and it would let me move and adjust it as needed.
My friend Lance agreed to be my grip, handling the flashlight for me. I think it worked well, and Lance did a great job of working the light. We did cheat a bit with some shots, blasting the light a little higher than a headlight might. But, well, think of an SUV with its high beams on! Yeah, that works.
The light was nice and direct, centered, with good fall-off. All of that appears to mimic the headlights exactly as I wanted. Having the car in many of the shots does the trick, too. All-in-all, I’m pretty pleased with the results.
Photography is all about light. No light, no photo – it’s pretty simple. But just having some light, perhaps enough to burn some photons on the camera’s sensor and make an image, isn’t always enough. For me, photos need to evoke some sort of feeling, connection, mood. And a scary Halloween event would be totally missing those characteristics if we’re not careful with the light, shaping it as needed. Hopefully, I’ve achieved my goal here.
I attended another event the same evening with a completely different feel. I’ll blog about it later.
