If you’re reading this month’s N-Photo on a dark autumn’s night, next to a roaring fire, and you come across this terrifying tutorial, you might just feel a creeping sense of foreboding as you remember that it’s the spookiest time of the year. But perhaps what you’re mistaking for unease is actually a burning desire to do some photography. This seasonal project is sure to get those creative pumpkin juices flowing. All you need is a standard focal length lens, a volunteer and layer-based image-editing software.
The shoot itself simple. Frame your image on a tripod, direct a light source onto your subject to create a shadow and fire the shutter. Then capture an identically framed and lit image, without the subject. Post is where the dark magic happens. You create a spooky shadow, which you then project onto the wall, using Photoshop to contort it into a believable position. A few layer masks, a bit of blur and an opacity change later and you’ve got a horrifying spectre shadow troubling your hapless subject.
