I Shot A Ghost! Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween to those that celebrate it! For Halloween, I wanted to share a recent photo of a ghost in Downtown Truckee, California.

Every year, I get hired to photograph the Historical Haunted Tour which is a fun event in Downtown Truckee where groups of performers entertain audiences at different locations around town with different "scary" stories that are very loosely based on Truckee's history. I wrote a bit more about the event in previous posts so I won't go into more detail on that.

This photo was based on one of the performances. In this story, the jar is supposed to be filled with a new magic mushroom moonshine that people were going crazy from. The mushrooms had been found growing on dead decomposing bodies after a tragedy with the train where many people died. I really don't think there was much actual history involved with this performance but it was a fun and funny one. The skit actually took place inside the train but I was asked if I could create one of my "ghost" photos on the back of the train. Of course I could!

click image to view large

This photo was shot on a Canon 5DS R and a 24-105mm lens set at 24mm. These ghost photos are always a bit tricky to shoot and it always requires me to do many test shots while I dial in the perfect exposure for the ambient light, the light from the flash, and the movement of the "ghost". There was a fairly bright light on the corner of a building that was right behind the camera so I was able to use a fairly low ISO of 200. Even though it was fairly bright out, I used a wide aperture of f4 in order to let in a lot of light and so it would pick up the light from my flash with a Lightsphere diffuser on it. This all let me to be able to have a long shutter speed of 3.2 seconds.

For these types of shots, I prefer to have at least one "mortal" and one "ghost". The "mortal" must stay perfectly still during the 3.2-second long exposure. The "ghost" must stay perfectly still for about a second during the very beginning of the exposure. The flash was set to first curtain sync, meaning it fired at the beginning of the 3.2-second exposure. The "ghost" then slowly backed out of the frame, leaving a transparent looking body with streaks of light coming from it. It leaves an illusion of a moving ghost that is always a fun look and always makes the event organizers happy.

I hope you enjoyed this ghost photo and tutorial today, and I hope you have a Happy Halloween!

Scott Thompson
Scott Shots Photography