Ghosts

In October 2019 we shot our third series, called Hauntings from a Distant Era. It was the fulfillment of a (dark) longtime dream to create some spooky images, expanding from portraiture into scenes, composites, and even gifs and animated photos. Experimentation is one of the primary motivators for these series, and we covered a breadth of different styles and techniques in Hauntings.

One of the more interesting experiments we did featured actor/photographer/intimacy designer Sarah Scanlon, who brought an idea for a medieval princess who lived in a castle haunted by ghosts.

HAUNTINGS FROM A DISTANT ERA #8: The Haunted Princess “Four times in her life the princess had died and four times escaped Death’s earthen prison. But on snake-silent nights in the lonely watch of winter, the four mad ghosts of her four bitter deaths howled for her in the darkness, screaming her name—shrieking, crying, calling her back to the grave.” Featuring the legendary Sarah Scanlon (x5)

On the day we photographed this concept, we decided to convey the ghosts as double exposures of Sarah, raising a question as to whether these ghosts were supernatural entities or perhaps the character’s own inner demons and voices in her head.

To do the double exposures, we placed Sarah against a black background and set the camera on a tripod to take a long exposure (50 mm, ISO 50, f/22, 5 sec.). Then Sarah rapidly adopted two or three different poses for the duration of the exposure. Sarah is a colossal talent and spontaneously created each of these looks in rapid succession. We fired the flash once per pose, and the resulting image showed two or three different forms, fused together. They were haunting.

The original composite of the haunted princess used the best exposures for that composite (above), but we took a good number of images, and some where arguably stronger photographs that didn’t necessarily fit with the final picture, which required a certain uniformity and symmetry in its composition. At the end of the process Sarah mentioned that she had particularly enjoyed the double exposures, so it seemed a fun idea to spend a little more time editing them and releasing them some future Halloween season.

Like this Halloween season, for instance, so here we are:

Most of the double exposures were captured on a tripod with a 50 mm lens at ISO 50, f/22, at a 5 second shutter speed.

Editing

The 2019 versions of these images were edited to work with the Hauntings from a Distant Era composite and were fainter and more desaturated, with less contrast. As ghostly visions in the background, they needed to complement the subject at center without drawing focus from her. The 2021 versions of these ghosts, however, are presented as the subjects of the images themselves, and as such they have been edited with greater clarity and drama. They are not typically monochromatic images, but only tinges of color remain to these ghosts and their clothes.

Inner Demons

I asked Sarah for her take on the ghostly double exposures and what they meant to her. She said:

Sometimes what someone shows you on the outside isn’t what’s happening on the inside.

This feels very true for how people have been processing their lives the last few years—the heartache, loss, uncertainty, and stress. Many of those feelings have been an effect of the pandemic, but some have simply been the circumstances of the time. Either way, there comes a point when retreading the territory of grief no longer feels helpful or productive, so we internalize our ghosts and demons and give them a place to play in our heads, and when others ask how we’re doing, as we struggle to embrace gratitude and abundance and the notion that things can always be worse, we say, “Fine; just fine,” while beneath the facade the ghosts and the demons are screaming for release.