Halloween is coming and the photographer has gotten fat,

and while he was sorting dinner he spotted the wee girls trike (OK, it doesn't rhyme.).

With winter arriving with vengeance I was cooking dinner tonight and looking out into the back garden. My daughters trike was sitting abandoned and I couldn't shake that "Here's Johnny" line. After saying it four or five times my wife cracked up and made me go and take the picture.

I think it's kinda sinister, but you maybe just think it's badly lit.

(f/8.0, 6secs, 100mm, ISO-200, 29/10/2008)

This was deliberately lit down low on the right side of the image to try and give it that partially lit appearance. To do it, I stood just out of shot and remotely fired the camera, then during the 6 second exposure I fired the flash manually from low to the ground and pointing up.

This is kind of a lead in for me to a concept known as 'off camera strobing' and something I'm hoping to do more off over the next while. There are a few good sites that deal with it, but the defacto best blog on the subject is The Strobist.