1. Carve the pumpkin. Okay, that’s obvious. But keep in mind that where you cut your initial hole may impact how easy it is to light the pumpkin later. I fall into the hole in back camp. That way I can have an easy way out for electric cords, or even putting a flash back there. I angle the cuts for the hole, but since I am putting the panel back, I angle all the cuts down, instead of toward the middle of the hole, as I would with a hole on top. It just helps the panel stay in place better when I replace it. I also cut a little notch for the cord.
2. Choose your inside light source. Traditionally, this would be a candle, but I find them too dim to make it easy to get a good pictures. They also flicker, which makes exposure a bit less reliable. As you saw from the last picture, I’m going with plain Christmas lights. White string would be better, but I wasn’t going to dig around the Christmas storage bin when the green ones were on top. Maybe next year. You want to balance your inside pumpkin light with the outside light, and have the inside lights be just a little brighter.
3. Choose your time of day. For my Christmas lights, around sunrise or sunset works fine. If it is too bright, you won’t get the glow of the pumpkin lights, and if it is too dim, you don’t get to see much of the pumpkin or the surroundings. Now you can see the choice of your lights makes a difference on what time of day you can shoot. You can adjust the brightness of the Christmas lights by pulling some of the lights outside the pumpkin. The light changes fast during this time of day, so ten minutes can make a big difference in how much light there is to work with outside.
This is 15 minutes after sunset.
This is 15 minutes after sunrise.
Shooting when there is a bit more light in your surroundings means you may not need to use a tripod, which helps you work faster.
4. Pick a location. Ideally, it would be with the sunset sky and a few brambly trees in the background, but Christmas lights mean that I am staying within a couple of feet from an outlet. On my porch is fine.
5. Decide on an exposure. If you use a dedicated point and shoot camera or a DSLR, you probably have a feature called exposure compensation. It’s often indicated by EV, standing for exposure value. By default, cameras in full automatic mode, will give you a middle of the road, average exposure.
Normal exposure, no exposure compensation.
In this case, though, you usually have better impact underexposing a bit. The exposure compensation feature helps you tell the camera that the subject isn’t supposed to be as bright as an average subject, and the picture comes out darker than usual. Positive EV numbers make the picture brighter, while negative EV numbers make the picture darker.
Exposure compensation, EV -1
Exposure compensation, EV -2
With the case of the pumpkins, exposing brighter will make the pumpkin skin look more orange, but exposing darker gives you more contrast, and your design is more visible. It just depends on the look you want.
Of course, if you use your camera in manual exposure mode, you don’t have to use exposure compensation, and you can just adjust your settings to get the degree of underexposure you want. You also have the advantage of knowing how slow your shutter speed is, so you know if you will need a tripod or room to ratchet up your ISO.
6. Avoid flare. I know I said five steps, but I’m an overachiever. Sometimes when you shoot pictures of a light source, you get streaks of fog, random circles, or ghost reflections of the lights. To avoid this on a DSLR, use the hood (a plastic ring that fits around the end of your lens) and take off your protective filter if you are using one. Also make sure your lens is clean of smudges. If you are using a point and shoot, just make sure your lens is clean and try to keep the light source(s) hidden behind solid areas of the pumpkin wall.
Did you carve a pumpkin this year? Take a picture and link it in the comments!
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