Lily + Chelsea - Ghostly.

A couple of days ago I had the chance to do a creative set of Halloween portraits for Chelsea and her incredibly sweet daughter Lily. I’ve known Chelsea since 7th grade, I believe, and I haven’t actually seen her since I graduated high school back in 2007. We’ve remained friend on social medias, and due to algorithms or whatever else, she is someone who pops up on my timeline, probably because we both travel often.

She sent me a message about wanting to get some “spooky” Halloween photos done because her daughter loves scary stuff. I hopped on that idea because if you guys didn’t know, I loooooove Halloween. 

At first I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d do to created a ghostly effect. I mean, I know there are probably all the Photoshop tricks in the world to do so, but I prefer to do it “in-camera.” I bought a prism the other day to mess around with and in experimenting, thanks to my rad boyfriend for always being my model, figured out how to create the ghostly effect I was looking for! Depending on how I manipulated the prism in front of the lens, I was able to make translucent “twins” of Lily and Chelsea appear, and I was, also, able to make them look translucent themselves! 

We shot a couple of regular autumn/seasonal photos, which turned out incredibly sweet. However, my favorite part was the point that i was able to get Lily involved in directing. Once I had the hang of replicating the ghost effect for multiple shots, I showed Lily one of the photos and she was so excited! I remember her saying “You have to show my mom, but don’t tell her what it is!” She was being super creative about other shots we could do as well!

Definitely my favorite set of Halloween photos I’ve shot, and I’m glad I got to catch up with an old friend and meet her super rad kid :]