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| Photo #1 |
Halloween Hunt is a chance for youngsters to go Trick or Treating on a Saturday afternoon with their parents. A neat trick, this. Kids go from business to business, collecting treats while dragging / exposing their parents into stores they might not otherwise visit. With each visit, they must check off the location to be eligible for a prize at the end of the day. These photos were taken at B Street Books, and here a young woman named Aurora, dressed as the fictional orphan Madeline, gives candy to a family of youngsters.
In retrospect,
Photo #1 was actually the best of the lot. All of the faces are visible, and all are looking at the card Madeline is about to check off. I used straight ceiling bounce for the shot, and got enough light bounce for reasonable shadow detail. However, I felt the shadows would be too dark to reproduce properly so I didn't bother to get my subject's names for a potential caption.
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| Photo #2 |
For
Photo #2, I pulled out the built-in bounce card for some added fill. I still marvel at how this simple addition can improve the foreground detail of the shot, but there can be a double shadow on your closest subjects (one shadow from the light bounced from the ceiling and a second from the bounce card itself. You can see the soft shadow edge following the jawline of the young man in green, but a much stronger one on in the foreground Wonder Woman. This is the shot I would ultimately submit.
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| Photo #3: 1/859 second, F 4.5, ISO 800 |
Bounced Fill Light: Moving to the alcove of the event "headquarters", I bounced my speedlight against the ceiling/wall junction behind me to balance the diffused sunlight on my subject's face (
Photo #3). The leaf shutter on the Fuji X100T allowed me to use a short exposure / high ISO combination to maximize the output of the shoe-mounted Nikon SB-800 (exposed manually).
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| Photo #4: 1/500, F 5.6, ISO 800 |
Bounced Main Light: This last shot is an example of when the flash is the dominant light source. Again, using the walls and ceiling of the alcove as a bounce surface, I was able to get a very nice exposure with no prominent blown highlights. I didn't bother to submit Photos #4 or #5 because I liked #2 so much.
Cute Kids Always Sell: Probably the paramount rule in my community photography is to include some kids in your shot. On Halloween, or on an event like this one, it's a target rich environment.
