Halloween At The Carolands Mansion

 

The Halloween Party at the Caroland's Mansion has become a must-do event for me, having missed it only when I was out of town. Staff and volunteers transform the mansion into a haunted house, complete with projected images on the walls, a haunted cemetery, and a witch that flies overhead on a cable. It is the "first stop" for trick-or-treaters in the neighborhood, and kids of all ages in all manners of costume shriek and giggle as they visit the ghastly tableaus and other macabre visions.

Timing is everything, especially when ambient light plays an important role. In order to show the ghostly projection on the exterior walls, one must wait until well after sundown and work with very high ISO settings. But by arriving early, finding a parking spot close to the main entrance was easy. 

I arrived at exactly 5:00 pm, and the sun wasn't schedule dot set until about 7:00. With time to kill, I walked about a made some random photographs. I often use a shoe-mounted speedlight to act as fill. While one could argue that this wouldn't be required when working in an "open shade" environment, the speedlight provides a color temperature that better matches the Cloudy White Balance Preset I usually use. 

These two shots were done with an on-camera flash to give some shape and some highlights. Without it, you are working in open shade lighting with little contrast and indistinct highlights.

As the ambient lighting dropped, I started to increase my ISO value, eventually hitting the 6400 mark. It's interesting to think that as the ISO increases, so does the effective range of my speedlight.

As the venue got darker and my ISO creeped higher, the single speedlight I had mounted on a light stand became proportionally more powerful. The mansion's driveway had a  to facilitate the loading and unloading of passengers, and the island at its center gave me safe place to position my flash. Since it was controlled by a radio trigger, I could point it in the general direction of the gathering crowds and move about taking candid photos. Since the subject-to-flash distance was constant, I wasn't always adjusting my shooting aperture or the speedlight's output.

I had arranged to make a group shot of the volunteers. Unfortunately, they wanted a photo made in the mock pumpkin patch. It was scheduled for later in the evening when there was a lull in the activities. The placement of the Key Light wasn't a problem.  I simple moved that shoe-mounted speedlight closer to my subjects. I tried to add some edge lighting to the group by placing two speedlights aimed at the backs of their heads, but only managed to get some spill light on the right side of the frame. Without additional light stands, I was limited to where those kicker lights could be placed. Close, very close, but the shot could still be improved.

Looking back, had I brought two extra light stands, I could have placed them just outside the frame, simply raised them to full height, and pointed them towards the ground, creating a puddle of light aimed at the the details in the behind. Instead of a rim light, I could have achieved some background separation while providing the viewer with some interesting details.

In the end, the top photo appeared on Page 2 of the Journal, while the bottom photo may wind up in a small frame on several desks within the organization.