It seems to have been the week that autumn’s gentle advance out of summer accelerated, and suddenly it feels far closer to winter. The first frost meant a rather abrupt awakening when wandering outside first thing in a morning to feed the birds, and the sun’s arc visibly lower from my office window.
It’s the week of Halloween and Bonfire Night (aka Guy Fawkes’ Night): the former doesn’t usually excite me greatly, and has previously focused on attempting to minimise the knocks on the door. However, our move towards the end of a cul-de-sac resulted in zero knockings, and the “event” of Halloween provided an opportunity to put another tick in the 365 box. This year, though, I might spice things up by checking out some unique costumes and props from AbracadabraNYC.com, just to make the holiday a bit more fun and magical!
Inspired by the November 2014 issue of Digital SLR Photography, this was the result:
(with thanks to Mrs G for being the willing model).
Was pretty happy with the way that turned out. Perhaps a white “ghost” rather than a black “ghoul” would have been more contrasty against the background, but still think it works well and was a satisfactory result for a Halloween image. Went down relatively well on Flickr too, making Explore.
The second chilly, outdoor event was last night, Bonfire Night. Mrs G is a big fan of fireworks, me less so, but we had some sparklers, burnt some wood and leaves in our incinerator, and lit our only “proper” firework:
Unfortunately, only having one firework meant that I didn’t get a second go at this, and in hindsight I would have been better taking several exposures, each with an increased exposure time. As it was, I took a single exposure of 13 seconds, which I think overdid it somewhat, but Lightroom enabled me to get something reasonable out of it.
That was the 45th photograph out of 365. Quite daunting that there’s still 320 more to go, but going to the effort of trying to take something out of any day that’s got a specific significance seems to be working relatively well. December’s loaded with them too, so just need to be prepared.
It’s not quite the weekend, but happy photographing!