Of Kings and Kitties

Homecoming in our town is a very big deal. Besides the Homecoming Queen and her underclassmen attendants, we also honor the littlest Homecoming King and Queen, who ride on the senior float in the homecoming parade. I had the distinct honor of photographing our little King this year in all his royalty. He made his appearance as if he were on the red carpet at the Oscars, along with his stuffed kitty "Charles". Charles also rode on the float.

The King was very poised and reveled in the attention he was getting, and seemed to understand the importance of his position, pretty remarkable for a guy his age, wouldn't you agree?

I took a cue from the movie theme of the float and added a little grain to this photo.

The King and his sidekick.

Haunting Season

We've all heard the stories - the wraithlike images of a girl in a tattered white dress, the soft cries in the night, the roses mysteriously appearing on abandoned graves - but no one has ever been able to capture a photo of our local ghost girl. I had some free time Sunday evening (well, not actually FREE time, but I was sure tired of editing photos and needed a break!) so I grabbed my camera and tripod and wandered down to the old cemetery just down the road. I know ghosts are notoriously shy and any disturbance in the air would frighten our girl away, so I set up the tripod, adjusted my camera settings, and waited. Just before dark I fired off a few shots. The results are, well, as you can see for yourself, well worth the wait. She seemed to be looking for something? someone? and at one point she turned and looked at me, and as you can tell from her expression, she was not very happy at the disturbance. She immediately got up, wandered out of the cemetery gate, paused to caress some wildflowers nearby, and was gone. She left me with an impression of loneliness, melancholy and wistfulness and some incredible images, which I am delighted to be able to share with you! Happy Hauntings from Cabin in the Woods!

Many thanks to Misty for helping me make my haunting images. I used my Canon D40 with 85mm 1.4 lens on a tripod (sans flash, of course-we couldn't have flash chasing our ghost away!). The ISO was 100, aperture was f/11, and I set it for an 8 second exposure. Misty stood perfectly still for the first four seconds of each exposure, and then dashed out of the frame for the remaining four seconds, leaving just a "ghost" of herself in the image. Cool, huh? And especially cool because there's no editing involved - nope, no photoshop manipulations in these photos, guys - the magic was all in the shooting. And many, many thanks to Bryan Peterson, the "rock star" of photography, for sharing his ghostly technique with us.