Thursday, November 5, 2015

Halloween in the French Quarger, New Orleans

I have been in one of my photographic blue funks for the past several weeks. Went to Ren Fest and came back empty handed. So when Beauregard invited me to tag along to New Orleans for Halloween I had great hopes that would pull me out. To a great extent it did.

I love festivals, carnivals, anything that encourages people to let their hair down. I am so up tight that it takes something over the top to draw me out.

This is going to be a long post. I might post all of the photos to flickr or just invite the people that went to come over to the studio if they want to see all of the photographs that I took. Two posts will follow this; one on Mardi Gras World and one on St Louis Cathedral. The second will be very short.

This first group was shot the night before Halloween. I was practicing sticking a 50mm lens in peoples face. I usually use a 200mm so that means that to cover the same area I have to be four times as close. I have always said that if you want me to take your picture I want to be sitting in your lap. With the 50mm you almost are... I didn't get as close as I should have on a few of these but it did gave me room to work with composition and environment.








Halloween  night I was afraid that I was not going to make it to Bourbon Street because there was a lack of interest for going in the rain. Finally Debi agreed to give it a try for which I am eternally grateful...

I used on camera flash with very slow shutter speeds so that I could include background. I hadn't tried this before but am very pleased with the results. Would like to have a flash bracket so I could get the flash more to the side for better modeling. I tried to let the flash 'fill' and hoped that the ambient lighting would create some modeling. That worked on some, didn't on others.

The costuming of course was important, but I am much more interested in the person than the costume.




























 As I said I also have photos from the Mardi Gras World, cemetery, the church and just walk-around photos that I will posting. In all it was, in my opinion, a very successful two days of photography.
 
 

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