Halloween may be over for another year but that doesn’t mean you can’t have some fun creating some terrifying portraits of your little monsters!
If, like me, you only thought to photograph your children in their costumes on your iPhone on Halloween night, then you may be disappointed with the results. However, there is still time to create some fantastically spooky portraits that will be both fun to create and a wonderful memento for you to look back on in years to come. So instead of photographing your children at night, why not get them into their costumes and photograph them in the day?! At this time of year the light can be fabulous to work with as the sun is low in the sky so there is no harsh overhead light to worry about. This makes photographing your children that much easier. We made the whole experience for my own children as much fun as possible by creating a mini treasure hunt in the woods to find some extra Halloween treats!
How We Created Our Halloween Portraits
For those with an interest in photography either professionally or otherwise, here is how we created the portraits below…
The morning after Halloween we were blessed with some wonderful atmospheric mist – perfect for creating something scary! We took the children to Ashdown Forest in Sussex before the mist cleared, armed with a Nikon D750 SLR camera, a tripod and a flashgun fitted with a honeycomb grid. The honeycomb grid is a fantastic accessory to have for your flash gun if you shoot off camera flash as it creates a more focused pool of light on your subject, enabling you to create dramatic portraits.
We found a suitably damp and eery crop of trees to work in as our backdrop and set the camera to ISO 400 and under exposed the image by 1 stop to create a darker, more dramatic scene. The flashgun was fixed to a lighting stand, complete with honeycomb grid attachment and the flash exposure compensation was adjusted to +1 stop. It was then held above, slightly in front and to the right of the subject at a 45 degree angle with the flash head pointing directly towards them. I used a Nikon 70-200mm lens and shot at F4. I gave lots of guidance to the children on how I wanted them to pose for each image by demonstrating each pose myself. The images were then post produced in Photoshop with extra drama created using Nik Filters.
