[SlickYamaha]

So a local friend of mine started a Haunted house a few years back, and after talking to his wife, she offered to come up and take some photos. Its a non paid gig, more for my enjoyment and experience.
Just wanted to know of some creative ways to get some nice scary photos. They had another photographer before, but his photos were to "portrait" and although they were of zombies, they were almost like taking a family portrait of zombies lol. I was hoping to add some nice effects to mine.

So does anyone have any ideas for something creative? I wanted to incorporate maybe a smoke machine in to get like a fog look, and maybe do some slightly longer than normal shutter speeds (.5/.7) with a flame and some movement. Maybe some backlit profiles to just get the silhouette? I was also thinking of doing the long shutter speed-zoom out. to get the effect of running away..

Just trying to think out of the box a little. I plan on getting plenty of "normal" photos but wanted to get some creative ones as well.

[blackcloudbrew]

Well now, this is a dead subject...[rim shot!]

No idea on this one.

[adpo]

grab a few improvised scrims and make a bunch of shadows! when i think of creepy images, i tend to think of a lot of shadows
here's a recent strobist post on how that could be used for fun:
Christoph Martin Schmid BTS: Scream
and here's a post i recently did describing how i lit for my own scary shot:
Scary Lighting

[bobpur]

Hi

Try shooting from the ground up and use a strong LED flashlight off to the side to accent the features. In general keep the light and cam around 45 deg. apart.
Everyone is dieing to see the shots, just don't make any Grave errors !
..And remember always Shoot them in the Head.... after all you are the BRAINS of the project.

[SlickYamaha]

I have a feeling this thread is going to be 45% informational, 65% puns, haha! Keep em coming!

[fuent104]

I would always try to shoot with the camera on the shadow side of the face.

[sameagle]

Couple quick thoughts:

get some dry ice / fan for a misty/smokey effect.
this is a case where razor sharp focus may not be what you want.
try focusing on something in the foreground (zombie killing weapons?) with the zombies in the background and out of focus.
dark lighting (and shadows) will probably look better than bright studio lighting.
try shooting under strong street lamps at nighttime.
try black and white.

- Sam