© 2012 Ashley Landis AL1_4822

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everybody!

It’s been a busy week for me, so I’m going to keep this short.  My husband, Nick, and I like to participate in Halloween activities (who doesn’t love costumes and candy?), but this is the busiest time of year for both of us.

We do what we can, like carving pumpkins in the middle of the night after we both finish with work and we find the time to buy cheap costumes that aren’t too much maintenance, just so we mark the holiday with a little bit of fun.

Those are our jack-o-lanterns at the top.  Mine is on the left, Nick’s is on the right.  A good tip to make them really glow is to put three or more tea lights inside them.  The tea lights sit lower than those candles you can buy specifically for jack-o-lanterns, and they’re cheap, so you can use several tea lights each time to put off more light.

For the photography portion of this post – to take a photo of your jack-o-lantern, light the candles inside the pumpkin, turn off the lights in the room, meter on the bright orange part of the face (not the flame, not the outside of the pumpkin), focus on the edge of one of your pumpkin’s features, and click the shutter.  Don’t use flash.  Raise your ISO to between 800 – 1600, and make sure your shutter is no slower than 1/100.

Our costumes are pictured below.  Nick is dressed as a blind referee and I’m Pocahontus  or Sacagawea (Pocahontus is easier to spell and doesn’t require a Wikipedia search).  Our costumes were store bought with touches of things we already had laying around.

I don’t say this very often, but for snapshots of costumes, put your camera on auto (if you’re not use to manual), or use your cell phone.  These photos aren’t rocket science, they’re just for fun.

Tonight we’ll be handing out candy in our neighborhood, something I enjoy very much.  I love seeing everyone’s costumes, and I don’t even get upset when 18-year-olds, or even parents collect candy.  Everybody loves candy!  I try to eat as much of it as I can before the end of the night.

Anyway, I hope all of you have a safe and happy Halloween!

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