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If you follow my blog, you may have noticed that I have not shot or posted any new photos in three months. The reason for the time away from shooting is personal. I haven’t shot much during my recent nighttime outing, not as much as I would have liked to anyways. But it’s better than not shooting at all. One of the reasons that I did not shoot any pictures during my three months absence was a lack of interest in shooting the “same old thing.”

I find that it can get repetitive and mundane, plus I was starting to lack in motivation and I wanted a change, something different. During my time way from shooting I thought that getting some new gear would be a good way to get me back out on the field. Personally I love getting new photography gear, and by an unexpected chance. I was able to do just that. I had recently purchased a Canon Speedlite 430EX II flash. The beauty of getting new photography gear is that it will motivate you to go out and shoot.

I was able to get out this past weekend and do some nighttime shooting of the New York City Halloween parade. I did contact my two photo buddies to see if they was going to be at the event as well. Turns out that they were, but unfortunately we were unable to connect at the parade. So this outing was a solo act for me. And that was fine with me; there will be another time that I can connect with the guys. Plus it allowed me to shoot at my pace plus experiment and test out my new photography equipment.

My camera configuration was the following: Canon EOS 600D with a Canon EF 35–70mm standard zoom lens aperture f/3.5-5.6. And Canon Speedlite 430EX II flash.

One thing that I will say about the New York City Halloween parade is that it’s a mother load of “target of opportunity” to photograph. So many people in costumes that it will make your head spin faster than actress Linda Blair from the movie The Exorcist. (I could not resist not using that one liner.)

Once I was home and got a chance to review my flash photography work, I just picked what I thought was some of the best photos out of the bunch/series. During my selection process I was more interested in my portrait and headshot photos of the people that I captured in costume. So this would be called a “spooky portrait” photo blog post, with a little street photography mixed in.

Daft Punk was one of the first set of people that I had captured.

This person was in total character being Anderson Cooper.

It did make me wonder if he was being in total character reporting the parade, or was he reporting that fictional character Snake Plissken is escaping New York? I know… I used another one liner. 🙂

This woman below gave me lots of time to photographer her. She seemed to enjoyed being in front of the camera.

I even got someone dressed as singer Freddy Mercury. By the time I had gotten to photograph the woman above and the Freddy Mercury look-a-like below I was in my experimenting stage of testing my Canon Speedlite 430EX II flash. Doing various items as bounce flash, using flash exposure compensation and manual flash. As you can see from the lighting of the person in the Freddy Mercury costume. Overall a good night it was. I think I have a new reason to get back out to shoot once again.