"It was a dark and stormy night.... "Halloween 2014

"It was a dark and storming night. And freaking cold!" It was very very cold, wet and windy this Halloween. This year I decided to cut back on my Halloween decorating. I have been averaging around less than one hundred Trick or Treater's the last few years. The amount of work I put into it isn't worth the stress I have been feeling getting everything ready and the quantity of visitors that show up. The stress was starting to out weight the fun I was having.

Here are a few elements of my Halloween decorating this year. I was so cold and tired Halloween night that I was not able to spend a lot of time trying to get better shots.

 

This is my house as seen from the street. This is actually the day before Halloween. Not all the decorations were up yet.

 

These two are my guardians at the top of the steps leading to the porch.

Front view of the porch

Left side of the porch

Right side of the porch

Closer view of one of the pedestals from the right side

The table to the left of my thrown

Part of the table to the right of my thrown.

 

I hope to set up a corner of my basement to do some Halloween themed vignettes. It would be a nice winter project.

 

Still life in the dark

I setup a space in the basement this weekend to try some still life photography. I placed a large sheet of black acrylic felt on a table and tacked it up on the wall also.

Black felt backdrop

The basement is normally lit by the long tube florescent lighting. But they produce more light than I wanted. So I was going to try some of those spiral florescent lights in some small lamps so I could control the angle of the light. But those produce an orangish light. Looks interesting but not what I wanted.

Orange glow from spiral florescent lighting

As it turns out the long tube florescent light produces the whitest light. So I turned them all off except one. The one I left one was on the other side of a partition, so most of its light is blocked. None of its light is direct. The light only came in through a doorway. Looking at the photo of the black felt backdrop setup, the light came in from the left side of the table.

First up is the deer skull I found a few weeks ago. With the light coming in from the side I was able to play with shadowing. The last photo shows the skull using a clamp-on light with the spiral florescent bulb.

Next is a couple of photo's on a possum skull. I hate possum's for some reason. I am glad this one is dead. It was living in my garage.They were all done with a spiral bulb.

Next I tried leaving on one one long tube florescent light that was in front of the backdrop. As you can see not much shadowing.

For the next test I will be making some LED spot lights of different colors. Since they will be spot lights I will be able to control the light better. Hopefully LED's will photograph well. Here is a link to my Flickr page with the rest of the photo's from last night session.