Ghosts & Gravestones
2014.10.25
Day Two Hundred and Five. Went out to meet up with a local photo group to a graveyard where the historical society was doing reenactments. Not normally something I would go to, but I was curious to check out the group. When I got there I was a bit disappointed by what I found. For as much as "gear doesn't matter", when you arrive and people are carrying point-and-shoots your confidence level in the group's skill level goes way down. The entire point of meeting up with photo groups is to shoot with people who are better than you so you can learn. This was clearly not going to be the case today, but I was already there, so I stuck around.
The graveyard didn't have any epic mausoleums, so I figured I'd try and make it more interesting by shooting entirely in infrared. It didn't take long for me to get bored waiting for each 2 minute exposure of the gravestones, so I wandered over to where the historical society was doing their thing. That's when I had an idea.
Normally, portraits and long exposure don't mix, but the people were dressed for the 1700s and there were gravestones around, so I thought it'd be neat to do ghost portraits. I had them stand for the first 90 seconds of the exposure, then move out of the frame for the last 30 seconds of the exposure to allow the background to come through.
Despite the motion blur of my models trying to hold still for 90 seconds, I think the effect works rather well. Not sure I'd do it again, but it was fun and I'm happy with how the shots came out :)
