4th Annual Halloween Bash

Every year Jenn and I have a big Halloween party at our house. Everyone costumes up, gets together and hilarity ensues. This year we decided to try something new...convert our barn into a photo booth.

We wanted the setup to be idiot-proof. We cleaned up the barn and arranged various yard tools in the background to add some interest. For lighting we experimented with using 2 strobes, using our flash, using a backlight, and many variants of the position of the lights before we arrived at the desired solution.

In the end, we chose to set up one of our strobe flashes in the corner and set it to 1/2 power. Because Jenn whitewashed the walls and ceiling, it's like shooting inside a giant soft-box. We angled the strobe at the ceiling and took advantage of the bouncy/reflective properties of light to evenly light both our subjects and background. Putting the strobe in the right corner gave some interest by producing mild shadows; the shadows were made because the left wall of the barn is mostly a red door instead of a white wall. The white walls reflected most of the light, while the red soaked up all the light except for red. The end result of the strobe placement produced a situation where all subjects were evenly lit without harsh highlights, and the shadows were warm and soft. That was the most important part of the setup.

We set the ISO (film speed) to 100, giving us the opportunity to get the greatest clarity and color saturation. The aperature was set to f8, this was large enough to allow a relatively fast shutter speed of 1/125", yet small enough to ensure that any object in the field of view will be in focus. The shutter was fast enough that people wouldn't be showing any motion blur. This is nice for the idiot-proofing factor.

We used our new toy, the remote shutter trigger, to take the shots. So instead of having to be behind the camera all night tripping over cords in the cramped space all we had to do was point the trigger at the camera and push the button...sweet.

All in all it was a successful setup and we'll definitely be doing it again next year.

Oh...and you may notice a few trends as you peruse the following photos. 1. People like to include their posteriors in the photo by either showing it, slapping it, grabbing someone else's, etc. 2. Certain people really like the camera (Ty, Andy, and Pat) 3. As the night goes on the photos seem to get more and more interesting. Enjoy!