Halloween Photo Tips

The big kids in my house haven't pulled together their Halloween costumes yet. My 6^th grader and his friends are going with a many-characters-of-Will-Ferrell theme. I think my guy has Elf, and I'm not sure he realizes green tights may be involved. Moving in a pack on Halloween seems to be safe spooky ground in middle school.

But if you've got little ones, you've probably already picked out the cutest costumes, which they've already tried on a dozen times or so. You'll want to record this child-centered holiday with lots of digital photos. Trust me, these are the images you'll want to have in the years to come. Small elves are much cuter than 5-foot-7-inch ones.

Darren Rowse of the Digital Photography School doesn't celebrate Halloween in a big way in Australia, but he's got some great tips for capturing Halloween photos of goblins and fairies and jack-o-lanterns. Oh my.

Much of his advice stems from the rules of good composition in photography. Here are some pointers from three of his eight tips and tutorials. Read them all, and you'll be taking some cherished photos of your star trick-or-treaters.

• Fill the frame: Zoom in as close as possible to get all the detail and facial expressions of your costumed ones.

• Get a great group shot of kids: This is hard to do, but Rowse offers lots of tips for group shots in this tutorial. First and foremost, be quick and take control of the sitch by telling the kids where to stand so no one is blocking out another. Take multiple shots because you know those heads will be moving. Take both wide and close shots. Zoom in for tight, expressive head shots, and zoom out to get the detail of the costumes.

• Shoot in low light: To capture the full effect of the day, you'll want some dusk shots of trick-or-treaters and lit-up jack-o-lanterns. You'll need to eschew your automatic settings and turn off the flash.

Rowse suggests increasing your ISO, which measures the sensitivity of your image sensor. The larger your number, the more sensitive your image sensor is to light and the darker conditions you can shoot in without having to slow down the shutter speed, Darren writes.

Also, you can slow down the shutter speed to let in more light, but a tripod is recommended if you do this to avoid blurry shots, and use a larger aperture setting to widen the hole in your lens to let in more available light.

Once you've taken your favorite shots—or if you've got some from past years—Darren invites you to post them to this Flickr Halloween Thread. Trick or Treat!