176. Halloween - October 23-29, 2016
Don-
I drove south of town a ways through NAPI to find a pumpkin
patch. NAPI is a Navajo agricultural farming lands. They have
huge irrigated areas for growing crops that are shipped all over
the world. They have a couple of very large pumpkin patches.
I took some pictures of one and then took it home and Photoshopped it
to give it an eerie Halloween evening feeling, I hope. The shooting
information is on the picture.
I drove south of town a ways through NAPI to find a pumpkin
patch. NAPI is a Navajo agricultural farming lands. They have
huge irrigated areas for growing crops that are shipped all over
the world. They have a couple of very large pumpkin patches.
I took some pictures of one and then took it home and Photoshopped it
to give it an eerie Halloween evening feeling, I hope. The shooting
information is on the picture.
Byron-
This theme does offer lots of creativity. I choose to go multimedia on this one. Even within that constraint I had choices. My original thought was to take a cue from Jerry and use a skull. I had another thought that involved a picture of a creepy old house. My original idea for this weeks picture was to take a picture of a skull in front of the Moon. I had shot some footage of the Moon with my new video camera. I played that footage on my TV and paused it. Thank goodness this isn't like the old days of video tape where a pause sometimes showed noise lines in the frame. That technology also had a time limit of about 5 minutes for the tape to be in pause. Beyond that, the spinning heads might wear off the oxide from the tape. Back to present day, I paused a frame and displayed it full frame on my TV. I found a skull at the Dollar store and cut a small hole in the back of it. I wedged my suction cup GoPro mount into the small hole. I then suction cupped it to the TV screen. That gave me a skull positioned about 4" in front of the Moon background. The image was OK but not special. I then removed the mount and photographed the moon by itself. I was smart enough to mount the camera on a tripod so it didn't move during this process. At that point I thought about using a haunted house instead of a skull. I found a picture of a haunted house online. I printed it on a clear, removable, window cling medium. I layed it in front of the Moon on the TV screen and photographed it. I took the 3 images to Photoshop to see what I could come up with. I decided to add the solo Moon image on top of the skull and make it translucent. It looked OK. I did the same to the haunted house image and I liked it much better. My Official submission is the Haunted House-Moon photo.
This theme does offer lots of creativity. I choose to go multimedia on this one. Even within that constraint I had choices. My original thought was to take a cue from Jerry and use a skull. I had another thought that involved a picture of a creepy old house. My original idea for this weeks picture was to take a picture of a skull in front of the Moon. I had shot some footage of the Moon with my new video camera. I played that footage on my TV and paused it. Thank goodness this isn't like the old days of video tape where a pause sometimes showed noise lines in the frame. That technology also had a time limit of about 5 minutes for the tape to be in pause. Beyond that, the spinning heads might wear off the oxide from the tape. Back to present day, I paused a frame and displayed it full frame on my TV. I found a skull at the Dollar store and cut a small hole in the back of it. I wedged my suction cup GoPro mount into the small hole. I then suction cupped it to the TV screen. That gave me a skull positioned about 4" in front of the Moon background. The image was OK but not special. I then removed the mount and photographed the moon by itself. I was smart enough to mount the camera on a tripod so it didn't move during this process. At that point I thought about using a haunted house instead of a skull. I found a picture of a haunted house online. I printed it on a clear, removable, window cling medium. I layed it in front of the Moon on the TV screen and photographed it. I took the 3 images to Photoshop to see what I could come up with. I decided to add the solo Moon image on top of the skull and make it translucent. It looked OK. I did the same to the haunted house image and I liked it much better. My Official submission is the Haunted House-Moon photo.
Kevin-
Seth Trent was a very bad guy from the moment he was born. It wasn't enough for Seth to add color to the cartoon characters in his coloring books. Instead he scribbled conflict, death and destruction. As he grew his improper interest carried over to delight in squishing bugs, joy in shooting sparrows with his BB gun, and laughter while kicking adorable puppies. Sadly as the years continued Seth's evil only blossomed until as a young man he was responsible for a multi-state murder spree. Was this in connection with crimes like robbery? No, unfortunately it was simply Seth.
Eventually Sheriff Frederick caught this your evil doer. And Judge David George quickly sentenced him to death by hanging. After that hanging moment the total horror that Seth had wrought was over and all was relatively good in the world again. Until one night, shortly before Halloween, Seth Trent’s skeleton rose out of the grave and went on yet another murderous adventure.
Sheriff Frederick was ready to retire, and hunting down an already dead man was the last way he wanted to spend his final working days. But there was really no choice, as this collection of bones were the remains of the worst man he had encountered in his career. When Sheriff Frederick caught up with the bones of Seth Trent and captured (which wasn’t hard as there were plenty of ways to grab him) him he pondered what to do, How do you put a skeleton on trial? But the sheriff quickly realized that Judge David George’s death sentence never assumed that Seth would come back. It simply stated that he should be hanged. So Sheriff Frederick didn’t even bother to ask the courts. He simply strung up another noose and lifted Seth’s skeleton up in the air.
Would this work? After all, skeletons don’t need to breath as they are already very dead, right? But as he was being lifted Seth clutched at this throat and began kicking. Automatic reflex? Who knows? But Seth Trent’s remains slowly stopped moving, and he was dead again. Sheriff Frederick didn’t bother to bury the skeleton this time, instead breaking apart the bones and scattering them across the county. Good bye and good riddance Seth Trent, really bad dude.
Nikon D4s, Manfrotto Carbon One 440 tripod, Acratech GP ballhead, 70-200mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens zoomed to 86mm, ISO 100, f/4 at 1 second. A small halogen continuous light place on the floor of the garage studio in Palm Springs provided the illumination to cast a shadow of a Halloween skeleton on the wall.
Seth Trent was a very bad guy from the moment he was born. It wasn't enough for Seth to add color to the cartoon characters in his coloring books. Instead he scribbled conflict, death and destruction. As he grew his improper interest carried over to delight in squishing bugs, joy in shooting sparrows with his BB gun, and laughter while kicking adorable puppies. Sadly as the years continued Seth's evil only blossomed until as a young man he was responsible for a multi-state murder spree. Was this in connection with crimes like robbery? No, unfortunately it was simply Seth.
Eventually Sheriff Frederick caught this your evil doer. And Judge David George quickly sentenced him to death by hanging. After that hanging moment the total horror that Seth had wrought was over and all was relatively good in the world again. Until one night, shortly before Halloween, Seth Trent’s skeleton rose out of the grave and went on yet another murderous adventure.
Sheriff Frederick was ready to retire, and hunting down an already dead man was the last way he wanted to spend his final working days. But there was really no choice, as this collection of bones were the remains of the worst man he had encountered in his career. When Sheriff Frederick caught up with the bones of Seth Trent and captured (which wasn’t hard as there were plenty of ways to grab him) him he pondered what to do, How do you put a skeleton on trial? But the sheriff quickly realized that Judge David George’s death sentence never assumed that Seth would come back. It simply stated that he should be hanged. So Sheriff Frederick didn’t even bother to ask the courts. He simply strung up another noose and lifted Seth’s skeleton up in the air.
Would this work? After all, skeletons don’t need to breath as they are already very dead, right? But as he was being lifted Seth clutched at this throat and began kicking. Automatic reflex? Who knows? But Seth Trent’s remains slowly stopped moving, and he was dead again. Sheriff Frederick didn’t bother to bury the skeleton this time, instead breaking apart the bones and scattering them across the county. Good bye and good riddance Seth Trent, really bad dude.
Nikon D4s, Manfrotto Carbon One 440 tripod, Acratech GP ballhead, 70-200mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens zoomed to 86mm, ISO 100, f/4 at 1 second. A small halogen continuous light place on the floor of the garage studio in Palm Springs provided the illumination to cast a shadow of a Halloween skeleton on the wall.
Paul-
I admit this may seem a bit gruesome and twisted, but I promise you this is less symptomatic of my mental state and is intended more as poking fun at a film trope. I’ll explain (at least I always try)…
One of the worst and over-used scenes in any kind of horror, spy or thriller movies is when some poor character is about to be interrogated by a particular psychotic or evil or Scientologist villain. The room is either dark and forbidding, or clinically immaculate white. (It never happens in a Green Bay Packers man cave.) Anyway, the poor victim looks to his/her side and sees a number of terrifying, vicious-looking tools neatly laid out. The bad guy leans over his victim and (sometimes through a surgical mask) utters something unforgivably cliché like “Shall we begin?”
Unless the protagonist arrives in the nick of time to save the now hyperventilating victim, here’s the signal for most folks to switch over to the Disney channel.
So, in homage to this film trope, I decided to take a stab (sorry) at this as it applies to a Halloween pumpkin.
A few cutting remarks… 18-55mm lens shot at 52mm; ISO 2000; 1/15 sec. at f/13; aperture priority; EV +1; pattern metering. The camera was mounted above the all the nasty-looking stuff using a copy stand. I attached a Digi-Slave ring light to the lens and shot the B&W picture with all the LEDs on at about 80% power. In Lightroom I boosted the contrast; slightly adjusted the red and orange filters; and increased the sharpness, detail and clarity just a bit. Over to PhotoScape where I used an antiquing effect that looks like…well, let’s not go there. I also applied a “crystalizing” effect in places to make the paper seem worn and aged.
I admit this may seem a bit gruesome and twisted, but I promise you this is less symptomatic of my mental state and is intended more as poking fun at a film trope. I’ll explain (at least I always try)…
One of the worst and over-used scenes in any kind of horror, spy or thriller movies is when some poor character is about to be interrogated by a particular psychotic or evil or Scientologist villain. The room is either dark and forbidding, or clinically immaculate white. (It never happens in a Green Bay Packers man cave.) Anyway, the poor victim looks to his/her side and sees a number of terrifying, vicious-looking tools neatly laid out. The bad guy leans over his victim and (sometimes through a surgical mask) utters something unforgivably cliché like “Shall we begin?”
Unless the protagonist arrives in the nick of time to save the now hyperventilating victim, here’s the signal for most folks to switch over to the Disney channel.
So, in homage to this film trope, I decided to take a stab (sorry) at this as it applies to a Halloween pumpkin.
A few cutting remarks… 18-55mm lens shot at 52mm; ISO 2000; 1/15 sec. at f/13; aperture priority; EV +1; pattern metering. The camera was mounted above the all the nasty-looking stuff using a copy stand. I attached a Digi-Slave ring light to the lens and shot the B&W picture with all the LEDs on at about 80% power. In Lightroom I boosted the contrast; slightly adjusted the red and orange filters; and increased the sharpness, detail and clarity just a bit. Over to PhotoScape where I used an antiquing effect that looks like…well, let’s not go there. I also applied a “crystalizing” effect in places to make the paper seem worn and aged.
Jerry-
I know you guys have seen plenty of creepy photos (out of season) from me before as this must be one of my favorite subjects. While shopping at Target I noticed a plastic skeleton foot for only $2 and had to have it. It would make an excellent candle holder provided I didn't let it burn down to the plastic. So I arranged it by the side of the garage and added some shovels and my old plastic skull. Light was from the candle and a bit coming in from a small overhead window.
Camera was the Sony A6300 on a tripod with the 16-50 set to 50mm. Exposure was F22 @ 1/30, ISO 25,600 for that gritty feeling.
I know you guys have seen plenty of creepy photos (out of season) from me before as this must be one of my favorite subjects. While shopping at Target I noticed a plastic skeleton foot for only $2 and had to have it. It would make an excellent candle holder provided I didn't let it burn down to the plastic. So I arranged it by the side of the garage and added some shovels and my old plastic skull. Light was from the candle and a bit coming in from a small overhead window.
Camera was the Sony A6300 on a tripod with the 16-50 set to 50mm. Exposure was F22 @ 1/30, ISO 25,600 for that gritty feeling.