While many associate Halloween with costumes and trick-or-treating, this time of year also offers special shooting opportunities for photographers. This unique holiday provides built-in characters, props, and scenes that we can use for a creative photoshoot. To help you make the most of Halloween, we put together a list of Halloween photography tips and ideas that you can easily put to use.
Halloween Photography Tips and Ideas
- Use Props
- Find or Make the Perfect Halloween Photography Backdrop
- Create Drama with Lighting
- Capture Silhouettes
- Document the Process
- Direct for Pose & Expression
- Make Ghost Trails with Long Exposure
- Adjust White Balance or Try It in Black and White
- Add Texture In-Camera
- Edit for Effect
Tip #1: Use Props
Halloween, like other marketing-friendly holidays, gets a dedicated month (or more) in most department stores. You’ve no doubt seen the shelves lined with countless Halloween-themed props, decorations, and costumes. If you don’t already have your own collection of Halloween gear, you should have no trouble finding some. Even a pumpkin or two should do the trick. This year, however, rather than use the items solely for their intended purpose, you’re going to feature them in Halloween-themed still shots.
We often think of props as objects we use to complement our subjects (which is a great use for them). But, we can also feature the props themselves as our subjects. Put together a few of your favorite Halloween items, compose your shot, dim the lights, and capture Halloween still-life magic. Of course, you can put these props to further use by placing them around your subject when capturing classic Halloween portraits.
Tip #2: Find or Make the Perfect Halloween Photography Backdrop
You might have the perfect subject wearing a movie-quality costume, but if the background doesn’t fit the occasion, the shot won’t work. Instead of capturing amazing Halloween portraits, it’ll look like you’re shooting BTS for an amazing shot the viewer will never see. Luckily, you won’t have to go far to find the right location. If your travel options are limited and you can’t make it out to a cemetery or some creepy old abandoned buildings, don’t worry. You can transform a small, unassuming space into the perfect Halloween photography backdrop, and it’s easier than you think.
In the video above, Gavin Hoey uses lighting, some plain gray and black fabric, sticks/branches from his yard, a smoke machine, and a bit of creative execution in-camera and during post to transform a small studio space into a spooky Halloween scene.
Halloween Photography Tip #3: Create Drama with Lighting
While lighting plays an important role in all photos, it is absolutely the key ingredient for setting the mood for Halloween photography. You’ll want to lean more towards the dark and dramatic side, using shadows and contrast to capture the spirit of Halloween. In terms of lighting patterns, then, you’ll mostly avoid flat lighting and opt for harsher angles, whether from the side, underneath, or above your subject. You can learn more about lighting patterns here in this video on Adorama’s YouTube channel.
Dramatic lighting for Halloween photography does not require the use of flash, but it can afford you the most control, especially depending on the location.
For indoor shoots, natural light through the windows or any areas in which you can control the amount of light entering the scene can work well if you don’t have (or want to use) flash. Closing down the curtains or placing V-flats near the windows can help block out light when needed.
Other light sources, for both indoors and outdoors, include candles (like those used inside jack-o-lanterns), flashlights, or other constant lights. Even a phone light will work.
If you plan to shoot outdoors, you’ll want to wait until it’s darker, unless you have a dark neutral density filter and one or more powerful flash units.
Halloween Photography Tip #4: Capture Silhouettes
One of the easiest ways to use light to create striking, or in this case, creepy portraits, is to backlight your subjects for a Halloween silhouette. The general technique for creating silhouettes still applies, but this time around, we want to surrender some clarity and embrace the mystery. What I mean by that is we can focus less (literally) on capturing a perfect silhouette and instead reveal only traces of recognizable shapes.
To do this, we just need a semi-transparent surface like a scrim/light diffuser, a bedsheet, or a frosted acrylic sheet and a backlight. You likely have a scrim, but another affordable way to make this happen on a larger scale is to purchase a piece of frosted glass static cling. They can come in multiple sizes and are easy to apply and remove from windows. If you don’t have a strobe for the backlight, a flashlight will do.
Experiment with different distances between the subject and the surface as well as the intensity of the backlight. Doing so will give you a variety of more or less pronounced silhouettes with varying degrees of detail for the subject. It’s also worth noting, the ambient light in the space should be relatively dark.
Of course, if you can pull off a shot like the cat in front of the moon pictured above, then, by all means, get a crisp silhouette for your Halloween portraits.
Tip #5: Document the Process
One approach you can take to capturing Halloween photography is documenting the day. Rather than setting up a shoot to get a specific portrait (which you can still do), plan to capture shots of the day as it unfolds. Some shots might include getting ready pictures, much like bridal prep portraits, with makeup shots and candid interactions between your crew before you head out to collect candy from your neighbors.
Halloween Photography Tip #6: Direct for Pose and Expression
As is true in basically all portrait photography, the subject’s expression should match the pose, which should also fit the mood of the image. For Halloween portraits, especially those marked by shadows and low lighting, poses and expressions will typically lean more toward the editorial side. This means you should direct your subject to lose the smiles (unless it’s a creepy Joker smile), ditch the happy poses (you can Google those), and opt instead for serious, perhaps even menacing poses.
Another factor you should consider while directing your subjects into a pose is your perspective or camera angle. Shooting from a lower vantage point can give your subject more presence and power in the frame. It also works to place your viewer into the action, depending on how wide or tight the frame is around the subject.
Tip #7: Make Ghost Trails with Long Exposure
Why not take advantage of tricks like long exposure to capture our subjects in ways we could never do with our naked eye? In the video above, Daniel Norton shares a quick trick with a tripod and multiple flashes that you can use to create creepy ghost trails.
Here’s another simple motion trick you can use that doesn’t require flash. First, place your camera on a tripod and slow your shutter speed. Then, pose your subject and lock in your focus. Finally, click the shutter and have your subject move around, maybe panning his/her head left and right, before holding perfectly still for the last half of the time that the shutter is open. You can achieve similar results using one on-camera flash set to rear-curtain sync, or by creating a composite in post, changing the opacity of different layers, and adding a motion blur filter to the “extra” layers.
Tip #8: Adjust White Balance or Try It in Black and White
Take a look at Halloween photography examples online and you’ll quickly notice a pattern regarding white balance. Many Halloween portraits feature a fairly cold white balance, often favoring blue hues over warmer tones. You might also notice that “colorful” Halloween pictures are somewhat desaturated and less vibrant than typical portraits. Of course, you’ll find no shortage of black-and-white Halloween images, too.
I recommend manually setting your white balance for a colder temperature, say in the neighborhood of 2000-3000K. Adjust as needed to taste. If you’re using flash, remember to add gels to match your white-balance settings in-camera, as well. You’ll have a chance to play with these colors again in post, but it’s worth shooting for the edit in-camera and not relying solely on post to “fix” everything.
Tip #9: Add Texture In-Camera
Creating a Halloween photography masterpiece is not the time to think “clean.” We want to add texture in-camera whenever possible to deepen the mystery of the image(s) we’re creating. Smoke, whether from Atmosphere Aerosol, a smoke bomb, sparklers, or incense sticks, is a popular go-to that complements Halloween quite nicely. Just make sure to use them as directed to avoid any real-life nightmares.
Another way to add texture really comes down to adding depth. You can control this in part with how you use props or scene elements to build out the shot. This goes back to finding or making the perfect backdrop, but this time we’re focusing on texture. Placing elements in the foreground, or choosing certain backdrops like trees, dirty bricks, or “aged” or paint-worn wooden panels, for example, can go a long way toward adding visual interest and authenticity to your Halloween photos. A lone shot of a subject against a solid black backdrop might just be what you need. However, when the scene plays a part in the frame, think of ways to use it like a character in the story.
Halloween Photography Tip #10: Edit for Effect
Once you’ve finished the shoot, take your images into Photoshop (or your preferred editing software) and put on the finishing touches. Here are some editing notes for perfecting your Halloween edit.
- Add More Texture: We talked about adding texture in-camera, but you can further enhance the texture in your image in post. For example, you can add smoke layers, which you can find online with photos of smoke over a dark background. Add the layer over your main image and set the blend mode to “screen” so that only the smoke remains visible. You can also bump up the grain slider to add some grit.
- Bump the Contrast: Everyday portraiture typically favors soft light and smooth transitions between light and shadows, but that’s not so with Halloween photography. Harsh light and sharp contrast make up the order of the day.
- Desaturate the Color: I mentioned this earlier when talking about adjusting the white balance. In addition to a cooler white balance, many Halloween portraits reduce color saturation or change the hue altogether. Give this a try and see if it makes your portrait look more dreary and less cheery.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed these Halloween photography tips and ideas. Of all the seasons and holidays we cycle through in a given year, few are better suited for photographers than Halloween. Much of what we need to pull off a fun, conceptual shoot is readily available, and even our own family members and friends will be more likely to volunteer for these sessions. Be sure to consider the tips above and give Halloween photography a go before the season passes by. If you’re late to the game, well, it’s really never too late to break out those costumes and props for an off-season Halloween-themed shoot.
