Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Fright night

Tigger

My wife and I had heard about the Pumpkin Walk that the village of Cedarburg, Wisconsin holds each year. Along with a fantastic array of Jack O'Lanterns along its historic main street, the local businesses stay open late to dish out treats to young trick-or-treaters.

Conferring

I decided to try my hand at some camera trickery -- using a hand-held off-camera flash to capture the spooky fun. I set my camera's white balance to incandescent to give the ambient light a blue cast, then placed a full CTO (orange) gel over the flash to get a proper white balance on whatever the flash lit up. The flash was tethered via a pc cord to the camera. I held the flash at arm's length away from the camera and slightly above the subject.

Little monsters

It took a few tries to get aperture and shutter speed coordinated to balance the backgrounds and subjects (as well as perfecting my aim with the flash while composing the shot), but once everything was in place, I was able to fire away.

Tabled

A complete set of shots from Halloween in Cedarburg can be seen in this set on Flickr.

Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.

2 comments:

Wanda said...

These pictures are so darn cool!!!

Maria said...

... I just love pumpkins!!!

I adore the pumpkin turned on its side with the stalk for a nose :o)
fun - fun post!