Halloween Shoot with Laura Hizer
This photoshoot came about the way a lot of photoshoots come about these days, with a DM on Instagram. Laura shot me a message asking if I had some availability for a Halloween shoot. I had around 12 shoots lined up that month already, Halloween can be busy, but we were able to find a time when we were both available.
She shot over some inspo and I started to get really excited. We discussed what look we were going with by pulling elements from the various inspo photos. I ordered some candles and broke out my hot glue gun.
The day of the shoot we got to work pulling the headdress together. That is actually really hard. Seriously, I was worried we weren’t going to be able to go with the original idea for a minute. Luckily, it worked out. Before getting the wardrobe pulled together we got the lighting ready so that as soon we were done with the headdress we could jump right into shooting.
The candles were lit and Laura stepped in front of the camera. BOOM. MAGIC. I shoot tethered, so we could see the shots as they were happening and they were killer. Laura was just hitting cool pose after cool pose and we managed to get a lot of shots in a very short period of time. That turned out to be a saving grace because it wasn’t long before one of the candles melted another candle in such a way that it dipped down and set the headdress on FIRE. Luckily we noticed quickly and got it put out. But, that marked the end of the shoot and also the end of me shooting with candles on people. I wont be doing that again. I always say, safety first. No shoot is worth getting hurt.
Immediately after posting these photos, by DMs BLEW UP! Friends, clients, and other photographers were reaching out to tell me how much they loved these photos. One photographer even told me that he thought these photos were my greatest work to date. I shared that with Laura and she wasn’t surprised. As a matter of fact, as of the time of this writing (September 2025) Laura is still using one of the photos from this shoot as her profile photo. Which to me, is the highest praise.
If you have ideas for your own Halloween shoot, don’t be afraid to reach out. Let’s shoot!
