Fright Night

I have been to the National Forest maize maze in Tatenhill a few times. Last year they organised a one night fright night on Halloween. This year they are building on that and going for 4 nights and making it bigger, better and much more scarier.

I'm excited to get the chance to photograph the event this year.

Last halloween I photographed a halloween party and the photographs turned out great because they were so natural. There is something about halloween that creates the perfect atmosphere to photograph.

Either people are dressed up and act to the camera instead of shying away or people are there to have fun.

Halloween 2009

This year I will be documenting the 4 nights of fright night. I will be taking photographs for advertising and documenting the events. I will then make money from any photographs I sell to visitors of the maze, with the aim of next year setting up something more professional.

It's sort of a bit of fun this year.

Today I was roped into making zombie scarecrows. My workspace was a barn full of cows, working with chicken wire and straw. I came out covered in cuts, fake blood and straw. I'm not sure who looked scarier, me or the zombie.

I'm happy to get involved from the start. I like that I'm not just photographing the event, by making things and being a part of the creative process it automatically makes you think about how you can make your photographs work better to suit the event.

I was thinking of how I could document this. Black and white or colour? Portraits or documentary?

My aim is to do a bit of both. I want the natural shots of people at the event but it would also be interesting to get some portraits, particularly of the actors who will be working and any visitors that choose to dress up.

Laura Pannack did a collection of photographs based on halloween. They were portraits of children in there fancy dress costumes. The natural background she has set them against is interesting and adds to the effect of the photograph. I could do something similar. It's going to be dark and very low light, I will need some artificial light.