What do you make of this?

[zaika]

even untouched the photo is creepy.

i'm still sad that it was real, though.

 

[Vintage Betty]

Thank you for the fun.

VB

 

[HadleyH]

He-he

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Don't laugh. In 6 or 7 more decades, that nice girl in the photos will be a ghost.

.

 

[HadleyH]

Don't laugh. In 6 or 7 more decades, that nice girl in the photos will be a ghost.

.

Yes Marc, but won't we all???? lol lol

 

[Marc Chevalier]

Yes. By then, we'll all be scaring each other.

.

 

[ScionPI2005]

Hehe...with Halloween coming, we should do this more often; course nobody will fall for it next time.

And I'm reporting that out of that one photograph, she actually doesn't look like my neighbor's kid sister after all.

 

[Marc Chevalier]

And I'm reporting that out of that one photograph, she actually doesn't look like my neighbor's kid sister after all.

Remind me to stay away from your neighbor's kid sister.

.

 

[Benny Holiday]

And her doll ain't bad, either.

.

You're scaring me already, Marc! lol

 

[carter]

Hello...hellooooo....anybody here?

Helloooooooo....any candy corn around here?

Hmmm.....I guess not.

Oh, I'll ask that little girl with the doll, maybe she kn...

 

[ScionPI2005]

Remind me to stay away from your neighbor's kid sister.

.

LOL, I was just about to ask you to remind me of the same thing, Marc!lol

 

[MrNewportCustom]

Ok then, I guess it's time for me to pull the curtains and tell what a lot of people already guessed. Yes, it's staged but up to a certain point.

The part of the story where I shoot images with three cameras is true, although I did use my own non-IR Rebel XT more than the two others. Essentially, the first two pics of the post are true. On with the juicy part.

To achieve the ghost effect seen at my first post, I had to cleverly work the pic in Photoshop; applying layers, re-creating the IR look using filters. So, unlike some of you believed, there are no dollar-store masks here; just a cute girl with ghostly make-up and a creative use of light/shadows effects.

Very good, Dominic. Very creative! I'm always impressed with your work. If I may, I'd like to explain the detective work that bought me to the conclusion I gave in my response:

First: I literally measured the first two ghost photos from many angles, while they were on my computer screen. In them, I found everything but the face to be an exact duplicate; same sizes and same distances from each other and from the edges. Since you'd mentioned your concern for blurred images, I had to assume that you did not use a tripod, and there is no possible way to take the same exact photo twice while hand-holding a camera, especially in low-light situations. I know, I've tried. lol

Second: The Rebel XT has a screen on the back for viewing your shots. I don’t know about you, but I check nearly every shot I take. Maybe not the moment I take them, but within a few minutes, anyway. If I’d seen something odd, I would have enlarged and panned the image for a better look at the oddity. Thus, I would have seen it before I got home. But that's just me.

Third: (Ironically, this is about the third shot.) I noticed two small reflections from whatever is in the lower corner of the window. It wasn’t present in the first two pictures, even though it was, indeed, the same window – of that I had no doubt. That told me that there was something or someone blocking it from view. Ghosts, from every picture I’ve ever seen of them, anyway, are rather transparent, and the reflections should have been visible through one.

That is how I came to my conclusion that they were staged. Thank you for the fun, Dominic. Your pictures are great! You are far more talented than I am. (I need to learn more about Photoshop, too. )

The first two photos, those of the trains, are incredible! Absolutely beautiful.


Lee

 

[Dominic]

I have to admit that there were some small loopholes in my explainations. lol The funniest thing is that the train pictures were taken last february and the ghost girl... in october 2004. As for checking the pics behind the camera, yes I do that, but I've set mine to stay only for 2 seconds. The LCD behind the XT is quite small and you can't really tell if the shot taken is good. It might lokk good on the LCD but when you blow it up on a monitor things can be different.

For the ghost girl, the trick was almost neanderthal, I simply ducplicated the original shot and completely erased the girl. I made a second duplicate to work the "ghost" effect and then flattened the layers. Sounds a bit simple but it was a bit of work.

As for the train pics, thanks, I have others that I'll eventually post.

 

[MrNewportCustom]

They were fun pictures, Dominic. I look forward to seeing more, whether they be of trains or ghosts. Thank you, Dominic! As I've said, your photography always impresses me.

fftopic: I went to a pawn shop (followed my brother, I hadn't really intended to go) and found a Hasselblad 500C with lens and 120 back. The leaf shutter doesn't close down more than about f4, and the film-plane shutter and mirror won't move unless I remove both the lens and the back. [huh] But, I got the whole set-up got $550.00, and took it directly to a camera shop to have it repaired. I expect maybe a couple hundred more for that.

I looked around a little and found that I got not a fantastic deal, but an okay one. (As it is, I did haggle one hundred off what they wanted for it.) I'd always wanted a Hasselblad, and now I have one. Well, will have one when its fixed.


Lee

 

[Ecuador Jim]

Darn, and I was just going to guess that the photo was of one of those Guy Fawkes masks, as seen in "V for Vendetta".