Bob Crum

It was fun... so long as I'd survive. Not a night for the faint of heart. In the darkness, indescribable nondescripts roamed Central Avenue positioned to pounce on unsuspecting hapless souls. Even fright was scared.

I was fine until sunset. At nightfall, I was startled by a presence that entered my awareness. She was the ghastly beguiling Witch of Fillmore, broom in hand. With bewitching eyes, she approached slyly, winked and with a raspy, guttural voice uttered: “Be careful what you wish for.” As I gasped for breath, she quickly slithered into the darkness.

As I slowly turned around, I was startled to see a bug on a bug. The largest tarantula I've ever encountered engulfed a VW Beetle. I gave it a wide birth when I heard it hiss.

Further down the street stood two haunting skeletons with evil soul-piercing laser eyes guarding a pickup truck. Gravestones filled the bed of the truck. Didn't see my name on any of them. With goosebumps aplenty, I went searching for treats! A strawberry margarita would be nice!

While traipsing about with anxious trepidation, I was jostled by spiderman, superman, black ghosts, white ghosts, dragons, preachers, thing 1, 2 3 and 4, wolves, princesses, a fairy godmother, a hot dog and even Hercules with pink hair strolling with box face!

The street was exceedingly crowded with curb-to-curb monsters. With photo ops at every turn, photographing any of it with so little elbow room proved to be a nightmarish dilemma. In a word: Exasperating!

Not only was the crowd a challenge, but cameras also need light for the lens to autofocus (AF). No light, no AF. My Canon 7D Mark II features 65-point cross-type AF that helps ensure precise AF and focuses quite fast. If a subject happened to be near sufficient light, AF worked reasonably well. But it can't work in the dark. Remember, many aspects of a digital image are fixable; focus is not!

Some subjects were OK to shoot with flash. With the pop-up flash activated, there's still the problem of focus. My Canon 7D MKII has pre-flash strobe light used to prevent red-eye in flash exposed photos. With the on-camera flash activated in darkness, the pre-flash strobe fires when I press the focus button. It's just enough light for the lens to focus, and as soon as it does, I press the shutter button. The problem is that the process takes time. It may only take a second or two, but by the time the lens does focus, it may be too late, the prime moment gone. BTW, I don't use the normal procedure of depressing the shutter button halfway for focus and exposure. I assign a different button on the camera for focus and exposure... the shutter button only for making the photo! Just my preference.

I incurred many challenges photographing the Trunk or Treat event. Back home, fearing the worst, I transferred the photos from the SD card to the computer with great apprehension. As suspected, many of the photos were not, ahem, properly exposed presenting a test of my post-processing prowess. I use Adobe Lightroom first. Thereafter export the photos to Photoshop Elements 14 with NIK plugins. Alas, 35 splendid photos are publishable. Color me ecstatic.

The photo of the week is not a fiendish Halloween cacodemon. Instead, I chose a charming lad delightfully dressed complete with a majestic sombrero.
Enjoy a youtube photo/video of the event at: https://youtu.be/Bg5-3P40QJg Next week, photos from the spectacular Day of the Dead event. Happy photoing!

Send comments, suggestions and/or questions to: focusonphotography@earthlink.net