Since today is Halloween, I thought I would talk about scary pictures. And I am not refering to that picture your mom took of you in the seventh grade with the bad haircut and unfortunate choice of eyeglass frames.

Spooky photography has been around for a long time. Check out some early examples from the American Museum of Photography's Ghostly Gallery. I wanted to create some of my own scary pictures using just a tripod, digital camera and a patient husband. Being a designer, I gave in to the call of Photoshop by the end of the process though.

I created this first picture by using the panoramic stitching feature on my V705. After I took the first shot of Aaron he would run and place himself in the next frame. After three shots, the camera seams the three captures together. While it is weird that there are three Aarons in one picture it isn't exactly scary.

For my next series of pictures I set the camera exposure to 8 seconds. Aaron would stand in the shot for 5 seconds, then duck out, creating a double exposure and making his image appear transparent.

To up the scary factor I made Aaron wear a top hat and dark overcoat. Images that "look old" rank higher in spookiness. I also used the black and white setting on my camera... way creepier than color.

I really like how this one turned out. If anything, it was fun shouting "MOVE!" and watching Aaron hit the floor and roll out of the shot.

I took these pictures at dusk... since there was going to be an 8 second exposure I needed the setting to be darker to avoid overexposure and blown out images.

At this point, I started using Photoshop. Using the tripod, I took a picture of the tree alone, Aaron sticking out on the left side, then Aaron sticking out of the right side. By layering the images on top of one another, erasing parts of Aaron on one layer, decreasing the opacity of Aaron on another, I was able to create the effect of his ghostly double.

To see other shots and more variations check out my spooky photography on our Blog Gallery. Do you have a spooky picture or photo tip? Leave a link to it in our comments!

Boo!

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I like wearing it, decorating with it and is it possible that food even tastes better when it's pink? I have a lot of pink stuff... pink mixer, pink shoes, pink water bottle. Once I approached my husband about painting the house pink and I got "the look".

Considering this you can imagine my reaction when the V705 came out in PINK! Oooo-dah-lah-lee!

The extra cool thing is, during October... if you buy a pink V705 in the Kodak Store, they will donate $25 to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

Oh and I totally did NOT plan on wearing that pink sweater when Tina took this picture for me, I swear.

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