Creating Ghostly Halloween Images

“When hinges creak in doorless chambers, and strange and frightening sounds echo through the halls. Whenever candlelights flicker, where the air is deathly still – that is the time when ghosts are present, practicing their terror with ghoulish delight!” – Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion

I have a love of all things creepy, especially as the Halloween season arrives. As soon as the first hint of fall arrives in the air, I’m playing spooky podcasts, watching my favorite scary movies, and starting our Halloween playlists. This year, when I started decorating for the season, I was inspired by the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland to create an eerie, haunted house vibe. As a photographer, of course, I knew our focal point would have to be a series of ghostly Halloween images.

There are a number of ways to create ghostly Halloween images, so I decided to try out a variety of different techniques to make some haunting images this Spooky Season. Here are some of the methods I tried.

The not quite there ghost

For this image, I used a tripod and a very slow shutter speed (around 10 seconds). With such a long shutter, ambient light needs to be at a minimum. I shot this when the sun was mostly gone and our hallway was dim. I dressed my daughter in some vintage style clothes, then had her stand just outside of the crate. After I clicked the shutter, I instructed her to walk very slowly towards me, then stop and stand as still as possible until the image was done. By having the dark hallway image first, my daughter looks translucent, with a ghostly trail from her movement towards the camera. The longer the subject stands still, the more “solid” your ghost appears. I converted to black and white with a lot of grain to enhance the spookiness.

The levitating ghost

For this image, we drove out to a spot I had been wanting to shoot in forever! This spooky tree on a hill seemed perfect for some Halloween images. In her vintage clothes again, I had my daughter stand on a stool and pose. After, I made sure to take an image of just the background with my daughter or the stool. In processing, I set the plain backdrop as my background layer, then cloned out the stool in the layer with my daughter’s picture. To add to the ghostly feel, I used a gradient mask to make it appear that she was fading out.

Double exposures

At the same tree from the previous image, I took a few shots of my daughter just exploring a little. I chose one image to place over another, and set the layer to screen mode. Then I brushed out the rest of the image, leaving only her ghosty “double.” You can also do double exposures in camera, which was another fun way to play around with the same concept with a slightly different effect.

Want to learn more about creative photography? Check out Diary of a Creative Storyteller!

Dark corners

I spotted this little triangle of light in my bedroom one morning and just had my daughter come stand in the corner with her face looking towards the light from the window to her side. This illuminated her face, while leaving everything else in shadow. This is a really easy way to create an eerie image without any extra props needed! A little dodge and burn also helped enhance the shadows and light and add to the mood of the image.

The headless man

This image was directly inspired by one of the canning portraits at the Haunted Mansion, and I was fortunate that my husband was willing to play along! A tripod was critical for this shot, so that I could take a background image first, then my husband against the same background without moving the camera between shots. In Photoshop, I put the image with my husband as a layer on top of the empty background. I carefully erased his head from the image, using a combination of the clone tool and eraser tool. I made sure to also clone out the shadow of his head from the wall behind him. To add to the vintage feel, I duplicated the layer a few times to brush away just bits of the image to make some areas appear more faded.

Double double toil and trouble

If ghosts aren’t your thing, spooky can be cute, too! I found this witch costume on sale and decided to have some fun with it. For the first image, I took my daughter to a nearby hill on a night when we were having a spectacular sunset! The second image almost didn’t happen, as my daughter wasn’t quite ready when I still had some light left in the sky. As a last ditch effort, I used my car headlights to illuminate the scene we had set up. A little dodge and burn helped hide the bright lights coming from the side. There are so many fun overlays you can find on Etsy and elsewhere, for fog, for the smoke from the cauldron, and the little magic sparkles.

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