Fiberoptic Pumpkin, photo by Harold Davis.

Soon comes the day of Halloween, which means in our house it’s time to trot out the fiberoptic pumpkin!

I bought this thing at Costco a number of years ago, and ever since then its emergence from the garage has been one of the highlights of Halloween for the kids. Sure, I guess it doesn’t really compare to costumes, candy, parties and the sugar highs–but they do tend to spend hours staring at the changing colors and (in the case of Mathew the toddler) cackling with glee.

This was a little tricky to photograph. I had to completely darken the room, put the camera on a tripod with my long macro lens, and stop down the aperture for a long duration exposure.

The problem was that the automatic meter underexposed, using some kind of average rather than exposing for the fiberoptics. I had to guestimate the exposure, and put it in using my D70’s manual settings.

Entering the manual exposures wasn’t so easy in the complete dark, and I found myself laughing (at yours truly) up on a chair in a darkened room with a flashlight peering through my bifocals at the camera. Is this Flickr and digital photo addiction, or what?

Some more fiberoptic pix: