Ghosts in the Graveyard Photos!

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6:00 AM

Ghosts in the Graveyard!

This is a throwback to October 15th 2012.
Still, to date, one of my favorite Halloween projects!

And I love Halloween!

Ghosts in the Graveyard--a Halloween Photo Shoot!

The first thing we did was take 376 pictures.
Well, lets back up. I told my kids what I wanted to do. Surprisingly, they were all on board! Even the 4 year old! Yay!
So we dressed them up. I picked church clothes that looked the most old-timey.
And the boys wore some bow ties that I hot glued together.
The boys had vests...the girl had an old school dress and dark gray tights. Pretty plain.

Then we found some accessories. Old keys, a vintage pocketwatch and a lacy parasol.
Then we trekked around our neighborhood...with me in a hoodie and yoga pants... looking for great picturesque places...and the little cemetery a mile across the road from us. (yes, we walked...we are a 1 car household)

Using a tripod, I would take a picture with my kids, then without moving the tripod the kids would step out of the picture and I would a few of just the background. The best part about this photoshoot is that I didn't need all
my kids to smile at the same time! :) I just told them to look kind of sad...and we got some great shots!

Now, I am a photoshop girl. I've used it since high school...

I think that's when the cavemen first invented photoshop for pc's. Anyways.

I decided to try out pixlr...and I love it! It's free...so super bonus there!

And it navigates basically the same as photoshop,

so it didn't take me long to figure things out.

So, if you've always wanted a great photo editing program--try this!
I loaded in 2 pictures. One with my children in it...and one of the plain background!

Get the idea?

This one is my favorite...look at my cute kids.

The edits here are super simple! But that's perfect, anyone can do it! Here's what I did.
Open up both pictures in pixlr.

Then copy the picture with the people and paste it right over the top of the

plain background picture.

You have 2 layers now. Then on the top layer (the one with the people) select that tiny carrot: Toggle Layer Settings

It will bring up the OPACITY bar. This is the fun part. Just use the slider to make the people appear ghost-like! Every picture is different. Some I took the opacity to 60% some only 73%...

Then you want to look at the layers and make sure they line up as good as they can. Not always super perfect, but it gives it a vintage double exposed kind of feel!
Then I Desaturated the images... You can also do sepia tones or old photo effects.