The fifth annual Saline Scarecrow Contest runs October 1 through 31 throughout downtown Saline. There are rules for participations of course. But that doesn’t mean all the fun and creativity must be restricted to them. [1]
As a photographer, ask yourself a few questions before picking any given scarecrow and heading out. What’s the essence of a “scarecrow”? Are there any attributes special to the story of one scarecrow or another here? Then, how might that best be captured in an image? [2,3]
The contestant for this article was titled “Headless Hopsman” and appeared before Salt Springs Brewery. It draws from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving, originally published in 1820. In 2013, Amanda Pallay summarized this nicely in Zing! article. [5,6,7]
The story takes place in the late 1700s in a fictional city called ‘Sleepy Hollow’ which is near Tarrytown, New York. A school teacher by the name of Ichabod Crane comes to town from Connecticut and finds himself at odds with a local by the name of Abraham “Brom Bones” Van Brunt over a woman named Katrina. Meanwhile, the ghost of a soldier who lost his head to a cannonball during the American Revolution haunts the area every night in search for his missing head. And should anyone interrupt the Headless Horseman on his quest to find his head, they are killed. One night, as he was leaving a party at Katrina’s home, Ichabod found himself face-to-face (so to speak) with the Horseman, never to be heard from again.
As an added point of interest here in Saline, Salt Springs Brewery building itself was originally constructed in 1899, as a church.
Having established the information above, composition framing was instructed by the goal of including the building itself in a way that enhanced the scarecrow presentation. No more of the Headlas Hopsman figure was included than needed to tell its story. Camera aperture selection was based on need to balance separating the scarecrow figure from the background for emphasis while maintaining stained glass window detail behind.
Of course, the only time to do this was well-after nightfall, under a pitch-black sky.
Available lighting as set by Salt Springs Brewery for the building and display provided all illumination here. An adaptor tube was added to the camera and a further wrapped extension was taped onto that to create vignetting.
If you capture any of your own scarecrow photographs in Saline, consider sharing them for others to see on Instagram.
References
Photographed on October 16, 2015 at 11:23pm using Leica X2 camera with 24mm Elmarit f/2.8 lens, KIWI LA-49X2s adaptor tube, set to f/5.6 at 1/2-second and ISO 400 (tripod-mount).
- “Saline Scarecrow Contest” Borer Family Chiropractic.
- “Hay, Man: The Curious Life and Times of Scarecrows” Lori Rotenberk (May 28, 2014) Modern Farmer.
- “Build a Scarecrow Day!” (July 3, 2011) Fun and Facts with kids.
- Salt Springs Brewery (home page).
- “The Winners!!!” Borer Family Chiropractic.
- The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Project Gutenberg) Washington Irving (1820).
- “The True Story Behind The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” Amanda Pallay (October 31, 2013) Zing!
