My cross to bear

At the last minute, I decided to spruce up our house for Halloween. The lasagna gardening patch that Alyssa is working on reminded me of freshly buried bodies, so why not a cemetery? I then waited a few days, as I was feeling pretty sick (still am today, but better), and went out on the town to buy some fake gravestones. I got the last one at Target on the 30th ($5), and then headed over to Display & Costume to pick up a few more. Talk about busy!! They had a parking attendant directing traffic! Their styrofoam gravestones were $20, so I opted for two of their $3.75 ones (pictured below)



As we were still short on graves, I made some iron crosses to practice my welds. Best weld is pictured below. If I didn't botch the end with the extra MIG wire it would have been darn near perfect.



I then hid some LED lights behind bricks & aimed them at the crosses.

Alyssa had just bought an LED candle holder, which I placed in front of her creepy painting. The height was perfect for the lamp!

We closed the curtains, and back lit them with 25 watt florescent lights that I put in the flood lamps I usually use to take Art From Scratch pictures with. I covered them with red gel filters.

At night, it actually looked somewhat impressive! The way the colors came out on this photo remind me of Tim Burton's style :)

Yes, I did some Photoshop work, but not too much. I used a tripod & shot 3 images at different exposure settings, then blended them together for the best lighting. Otherwise, the door & windows would have been blown out. I also gave it a slight vignette at the edges to highlight the center more. Click on all images for enlargements!