Tips for Taking Halloween Photos

Halloween photography often involves dark or low-light images, such as glowing jack-o-lanterns or haunted houses. Therefore, you have to be careful about using enough light sources for your photographs. One thing to keep in mind is to not use a direct flash if you can help it-it will only light up the forefront of your photos and it will make your subject look flat. However, you can diffuse your flash by covering it with colored cellophane or tissue paper. Red or orange may be good colors to start with, but you should test other colors beforehand to find out which ones work best for you.

Taking Low-Light Halloween Photos

First, before you take any nighttime Halloween shots, get a tripod. This will stabilize your camera and make sure none of your low-lit shots come out blurry. If you cannot use a tripod, you can also place your camera on steady surfaces; however, this does not always work as well.

Next, increase your ISO to as high as possible. This will allow you to take photos with a faster shutter speed, which means your photos are less likely to come out blurry. Unfortunately, it will make your photos look grainier, but generally non-blurry images are better than grainy images.

You will have to slow down your shutter speed to let more light into the camera, but if there is any movement in your shot you will see it as a blur. This is where the tripod comes in handy because it will make sure your shots will not be blurry due to an unsteady hand.

Widen your aperture-this also means use a large aperture. This will let more light into the camera and reduce the depth of field in your photos.

Taking Photos That Glow

If you are taking photos in blacklight or photos that have glow, such as the glow from a jack-o-lantern, then you need to overexpose your shots a little bit. If you can, add more light to your shot-either by using a flashlight, candles, or glowsticks-so that you will not have too many dark patches. Play around with where you place your extra light. Try adding glowsticks inside the jack-o-lantern or candles around it. You may also want to experiment taking multiple shots with multiple exposures to ensure that you get at least one good photo. This is known as exposure bracketing.

For a more detailed explanation of blacklight photography, read my article, How to Do Blacklight Photography.