Snap the best photos this Halloween

It's almost that time of year for ghosts, goblins, and little Sarah Palins to wander the streets of your neighborhood. How do you get the best photos of all the scary costumes and creepy decorations? Here are some tips for shooting on Halloween.

Go out early - The horrors of Daylight Saving Time (which ends November 2) at least gives photographers one nice benefit this year: You get an extra hour of daylight on Halloween to shoot in. If you focus your shooting on the hours of dusk right before sunset, you'll get the best shots. Don't use a flash.

Get close - After dark, you're not going to get good wide shots of people, with or without a flash, so try to focus on one subject at a time: One or two people per shot only, and small groups only if they're really close together. You'll get even better shots if you focus just on faces, since you can get really close and lighting will be less of an issue. Depending on the ambient light, you'll have to experiment with the flash. You won't capture much, if any, of the background if you use the flash, but you're likely to have not enough ambient light to get many details at all if you don't. Try taking one shot with the flash on, then another with it off. Delete the crummy one the next morning.

...or go wide - Want to grab a pic of the haunted house at the end of the block? Presuming there is some lighting on or in the house (windows, street lights, moonlight, anything), try a really wide shot with no flash. You can get some really moody results this way; just make sure you brace your camera using a tripod or other steadying technique so you don't get a blurry image. (One suggestion: Get down on one knee and brace the camera against the knee that's still propped up.) Don't expect to make out any people in these shots, only silhouettes and scenery.

Load up the jack-o-lantern lights - I never get good shots of jack-o-lanterns because you need lots of light inside and I'm always out of candles. Designs with more holes in them will photograph better, but adding more light inside will help any pumpkin shot. Some even suggest cutting a hole in the back of the pumpkin and shining a flashlight through it in order to get a really clear shot. Use a tripod if you can.

For cheap thrills - Get the kids to hold flashlights under their chins and make scary faces. Get up close (or up high over their head -- weird angles work great on Halloween) and fill the frame with their faces. Again, no flash. Perfect for the Christmas card.

Don't eat all the candy on Halloween night - Save some for your dad!