Halloween Crow

Halloween Crow - #340/365, originally uploaded by PJMixer.

The kids have been very creative in decorating the house for Halloween, but trying to capture a decent shot of the lighting and the black crow turned out to be quite tricky. I ended up using the pop-in flash in conjunction with my external Speedlight to appropriately (spooky) light the crow from above and try to reduce the white light on the railing. Then it was a bit of a battle trying to keep the background clean of distractions (an overlooked detail with many photographs). I used in-camera Nikon D-Lighting to lighten the shadows a little which brought the eye a little more towards the crow (rather than the glow of the pumpkin lights) and it was nice for the cobweb on the wall too. I used a remote release on a 2 sec timer so I could trigger the shutter and position the flash over the subject. Not sure if the final result was worth all the effort, but it was fun trying.