Photo Blogging Challenge (October 2017): Photographer’s Choice

Oh man, October was a busy month. And I had so many photos to choose from that I almost didn't want to stick with my plan. We had our county fair, we had the State Fair of Texas, we backpacked, we worked on Eagle projects, my youngest passed his Eagle Board of Review, I went to Chicago and saw things and ate things, went on a walk around here and learned stuff about my town I didn't know. And then there was Hallowe'en. So let me get this out of the way, head over to my Flickr stream for October and peruse my other photos, if you will. I was pleased with many.

On to this Photographer's choice. I decided to highlight some of my Hallowe'en creeps using long exposure and light painting of sorts. Some of these, I handheld a speedlite and manually fired the flash, multiple times on occasion, others I used my phone or another flashlight to play with the lighting. I'll try to recall which method I did on each one.

This one was my phone flashlight held underneath the chin. I had some ambient light on this one, it was only a .6 second exposure, f5.3 and ISO 400. I decided to close down the lens on subsequent ones to give me more DOF.

This guy is all iPhone flashlight. I learned that you have to make sure the screen is turned off when using your phone in this way. The ghostly streaks are the front of my phone as I am running around painting my fisherman. In the end, I liked the ghosts so I left them. He is a 10 sec. exposure at f14. I stuck with ISO 400 on all of these, I think 

As with the fisherman, my oldest, John, designed this setup. He likes Hallowe'en as much as I. I had quite a bit of ambient light coming from behind on this one from a floodlight on the house. I manually triggered my handheld speedlite, first from the right hand side of the grave marker, then two or three times from the left hand side of the ghoul. 4 sec at f14. 

This one was tricky. I had made several attempts using a handheld speedlite but was always unhappy. I couldn't keep the flash off the background. What I ended up with was a solar spotlight from the yard. I held my hand over it in such a way to make a slash. I kept the slash over her face for about 60% of the exposure then moved it across her forearm to highlight the snake. 10 sec at f14

With this little banjo player, he was picking up some of the glow of the jack o' lantern but not enough to fully light him. Jack was overpowering so I put him on a dimmer and dropped his intensity by about 50%. With my handheld speedlight, I decided to key the banjo skeleton from the left and let the punkin fill in the rest. 4 sec at f14.

There are my five. I took a few more like these for my daily shots. I like experimenting with light manipulation. Digital photography certainly makes it much easier. Take a look at PJs blog for some more submissions. Come back next month for a new set with a new theme.