West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval 2008

Tee Why

OK, this is an annual event in West Hollywood, CA. Basically, they blocks off about a mile or so of a wide street and 300,000 costumed folks congregate and hang out, listen to music, and take pics. Initially, there was enough room to actually take pics, but by the end of the night it's so crowded you are literally elbow to elbow. So basically you are shooting costumed folks as they are walking by with no control of the street lighting, background, and you have a few seconds before they move by. Makes for fast fun shooting.

I decided to have fun more this time and brought my gnome along for a photo project of mine.

1. Moonie the gnome finds his long lost cousins.


2. Foxy Lady.


3. Zombies


4. Cat Woman


5. Airline stewardesses.


6. There were several Sara Palins.


7. Iron Man Checking out the business end of Moonie.


Many more here, some maybe NSFW.
http://tomyi.smugmug.com/gallery/6286373_nw7Fy#P-1-20

grimace

Nice Palin shot.

Tee Why

Thanks, there were several of them, she seemed most accurate.

schmoo

I love these portraits! Very well done. There's snaps of Halloween parties and then there's great lighting in party situations, like these.

I love your mastery of flash! May I ask what your setup was for these?

Tee Why

schmoo wrote:

I love these portraits! Very well done. There's snaps of Halloween parties and then there's great lighting in party situations, like these.

I love your mastery of flash! May I ask what your setup was for these?

Wow, thanks.
Actually, the lighting was tough, basically at night in the middle of a blocked off road. I used a low ISO of 200 for noise control and dragged the shutter to get some background to show up with FEC set at -1.5 so I don't get the washed out look of deer caught in the headlight effect. Lastly, I used a CTO stofen cover to balance the tungsten ambient light with the flash.