Homemade Halloween posters don’t have to be slick and sophisticated to be entertaining, in fact it’s fair to say that cheesy can be best in some cases. There are no rules to making a Halloween poster, but the considerations in this lesson may be helpful.

In this poster we used Alex, the warehouse manager at Photoflex, as our subject. Alex is a very easy-going guy, which makes it all the better to use him as the subject for a ghoulish movie poster. For the people that know Alex, the poster makes them laugh, even without a caption. Here’s Alex in figure 1.

Figure 1

As in all types of photography, if you want to make the result dramatic, don’t fully light the subject. Leave some things up to the imagination. If the lighting doesn’t hide parts of the subject, do it with cropping or props.

The lighting for this photo was very straightforward, and quite easy to reproduce with two or three lights. The key light is placed on the floor and pointed up into Alex’s face. In this case I used a bare First Studio lamp with a 250watt bulb.

A medium SilverDome® with a grid was used on a boom above Alex’s head to separate him from the black background. Finally, a second First Studio bare light was placed to the left of the subject to highlight his hands.

This style of lighting is to be avoided with normal portraits, but it’s great for making your subject look evil. Check out the shadows from his eyebrows that make him look like a Klingon. Figure 2.

There were a number of Photoshop enhancements to the image, but none of them required complicated steps. Pasting in the dark and threatening moonlit sky was a simple matter of finding a royalty-free image on the internet and sizing it to fit the top 1/3 of the image.

Areas of the sky were erased where we wanted Alex’s face to appear in front of the background. Because the sky and Alex are mostly comprised of dark tones, the process didn’t need to be done with precision.

Alex’s eyes were painted black. Removing the highlights from eyes also removes the feeling of a friendly personality, which enhanced the ghoulish goal of the poster. Some highlights were added to the sword to make it look old and rusty. The overall image was ‘distressed’ using a texture filter. Finally, contrast was added to make the lighting seem harsher than it was in the studio.

In the following photo of a little boy (Matthew) watching the arrival of aliens, we took another very simple approach. The posing was the most difficult step, as anyone that’s worked with children will recognize.

I tested the lighting, selected my camera angle and composed the shot in advance. We rehearsed the shot with an older child while Matthew watched. When Matthew seemed interested enough to look out the window and see what the previous child had been seeing, his father put him in place and we got three quick frames.

The session took no more than 2 seconds. Fortunately I got what I needed because he became distracted with other things after just a few shots. Note: When shooting commercial jobs with children I always budget for at least one extra model for each aged child so I don't have to keep them on the set for more than just a few minutes at a time.

Here's the lighting for the previous shot. I placed a TritonFlash® outside in the backyard with just the polished reflector on it, and aimed it right at Matthew to create the stark shadows that fall across the floor. The TritonFlash® was set at ¼ power.

There was enough light in the room to give me the small amount of fill light that I needed. That’s it, no other lights or reflectors were used.

Figure 6

In this next shot we see the comparison of the original photo and the slightly modified image. Debbie, the Graphic Artist here at Photoflex, did a good job to concentrate the attention of the shot onto Matthew by darkening the edges of the image. This vignetting also makes the outside light look like a spotlight from the spaceship at the top of the frame. She also drew an alien and placed him in the distance.

Note that the design of the photograph allows for the insertion of type at the top and bottom of the poster. It's very important to compose your image with extra space in mind. Photographers and Art Directors refer to leaving extra room as 'shooting fat'.

Camera settings: Nikon D-300, 12-24 Nikon zoom at 12mm. 1/200 of a second @ f/9 using ISO 500.

In the next project we got a little silly. The poster is an homage to the scary movies of the 1950s in which animals become mutated and attack people. We used the family pet, Digger the Dog, as the monster.

NOTE: A Photoshop layer of the giant dog is available for download at the following URL: www.photoflex.com/img/pls/lessons/Halloween_2011/Dog_layer.psd

We coaxed Digger into trying to bite a cat toy. (Figure 8) I used the pop-up flash on my Nikon and held a 42” LitePanel™ in my free hand to bounce some window light onto the dog. I shot the photo at 1/125th of a second to produce a little motion blur from Digger’s movement. F/4.5 at ISO 640.

The second element for the shot is the family being attacked. I got the family to stand on the front lawn and have Bob (dad) pretending to defend his loved ones with a shovel. As in the dog photo, I used my pop-up flash and a 42” LitePanel for supplemental lighting.

Note that I shot this image to allow for Digger's head to be dropped into the upper right portion. Gracie (youngest daughter) was cropped out to make the photo meet the format requirements. Also, she doesn't know how to look scared.

Figure 10

For those of us that prefer more gruesome images, here's an approach that will suit your tastes. This is a simple image montage using a photo of a handmade skull. The skull was made by special effects master Brandon Kihl. We thank him for the use of his photo.

The skull photo is placed upon the earlier photo of Alex and then selectively shaded and erased. This approach is a quick way to achieve what would normally be a complicated special effects project. The quality isn't up to Hollywood standards, but its fine for our purposes.

The skull image fits neatly onto Alex's face, and looks more demonic after part of it is erased. Many other montage approaches are possible by placing animal faces onto humans. Just remember to keep the subject's face dark when you take the original photo.

NOTE: A Photoshop layer of the skull is available for download at the following URL: www.photoflex.com/img/pls/lessons/Halloween_2011/Skull_overlay_layer.psd

Figure 12

We hope these ideas inspire you to have some fun with photography this Halloween!


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Photographed and written by Jeffery Jay Luhn, contributing Instructor for PhotoflexLightingSchool

Modeled by Alex Sanchez

Post Production by Deborah Ortiz