Shadows of Horror
“Shadows of Horror” frame 2. Scroll down to see full photo narrative.
“Shadows of Horror” is a short photo narrative designed to immerse the viewer in a single horrific moment in time. It was my first truly experimental photography project, substituting a physical subject with cleverly placed shadows to tell my story.
I shot the entire project with no money, no crew, and minimal equipment. My car’s headlights served as the only light source in the scene, and each picture was taken on a tripod while I carefully positioned myself to cast the correct shadow. Trial and error was the only way forward, and the process was incredibly cumbersome on my own. I arrived at the site with a vision, but had to make adjustments on the fly based on what was feasible and what looked good on camera. What you see are the best shots from tens of setups and hundreds of takes, completely alone in the cold dark.
Despite these strict limitations, the photos turned out excellent. The spectacular location and free-flowing creativity of that night translated perfectly onto the screen. I had to make surprisingly few adjustments to create the finished product. I performed some minor touch-ups in Photoshop: manually removing distracting background objects, darkening certain shadows, adjusting brightness curves, and converting the photos to grayscale. However, most of what you see is directly out-of-camera, with these post-production changes being generally negligible.
After critical praise from peers and faculty at Millikin University, I was encouraged to submit “Shadows of Horror” to the American Advertising Federation Awards. I won a gold ADDY for photography in the Southern Illinois chapter competition, and I went on to win gold in the district competition as well, propelling my photo narrative to compete on the national stage. While I didn’t win a national award, this was still a major accomplishment in my undergraduate career. My meteoric success in this award competition would go on to be credited as one of five career-defining successes that helped me earn the Scovill Award—the highest honor a student can earn at Millikin University, and one that is only granted to eight students each year campus-wide.
Photo Gallery
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Photo Gallery ↓
Shadows of Horror: Lost Photos
Given my uncertainty about my concept’s viability, I cast a wide net when capturing images for this project. In the end, I had quite a few compelling compositions to choose from, which I narrowed down to five. Of those five photos, only three made the final cut. I felt the narrative benefited from simplicity, and bloating the camera roll ran the risk of making the concept feel gimmicky. The narrative itself is not complex. It’s a snapshot of a moment, taking a ubiquitous horror trope and framing it through a unique lens. Therefore, photos that didn’t add a unique perspective or contribute to the chilling atmosphere were considered unnecessary to the story. Below are the two cut photos from “Shadows of Horror,” edited to match the rest of the scene. You can decide if these photos would have been effective additions to the project, or if they’re best left as cut content.
A stalker creeps forward (cut content), photography
Blood splatters from a dead body (cut content), photography
