If you're visiting Digital Camera World on a dark autumn night and you come across this terrifying tutorial, you might just feel a creeping sense of foreboding. After all, it's the spookiest time of the year. But perhaps what you're mistaking for unease is a burning desire to do some Halloween-themed photography. This seasonal project is sure to get those creative pumpkin juices flowing. All you need is the best standard zoom lens or the best 50mm lens, a volunteer and layer-based image-editing software like Adobe Photoshop CC or Affinity Photo 2.
The shoot itself is frightfully 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-production is where the 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 specter shadow troubling your hapless subject.
