Sunday Snapshot: The Freshmen Halloween Party
This is the team’s second year in a row to throw a halloween party for the freshmen in one of the teaching buildings on campus. In the past, we’ve done Halloween open houses at our apartments. But we discovered having hundreds of feet traipsing through the classrooms is preferable to hundreds of feet traipsing through our homes. This also prevents a mass of students from congregating in the family’s apartments just staring at the kids.
This year the party went off without a hitch, thanks to the large bevy of students volunteers we recruited.
The various freshmen English major classes had set times to arrive to the party, and Seth (aka Abe Lincoln) served as door keeper to attempt (attempt being the key word) to halt the entry of upperclassmen/other majors that were quite intrigued by the happenings.
Upon entry, the first stop was a spooky haunted house, complete with fog machines (also known as humidifiers), scary music, and creepily dressed creatures that jumped out or grabbed your ankles. In case all of that wasn’t spooky enough, Anthony would get the students all riled up with a scary story before entering.
And then he would sometimes even hold the exit door closed as they tried to escape. Apparently he has a bit of an evil streak in him.
The thoroughly spooked students would then move on to the “carnival” room, which featured the games of Eyeball Plop and Bat Toss, as well as Mark’s impossible puzzles.
One of the puzzles involved cutting a long chain.
And another was trying to get two ropes untangled that were tied to your and your partner’s wrists.
The next room housed musical chairs and face painting. Last year, Lauren was the sole person responsible for painting hundreds of faces. This year, she wisely trained a group of students to handle the job.
Which meant the designs were maybe slightly more…shall we say, unique? Well, they started out quite normal…cats, and lions, and so forth. But as the evening progressed, the tastes and preferences started to stray from the typical.
One of the most popular choices of the evening was having your English name scrawled across your face.
Musical chairs was definitely one of the more popular activities, and under Lauren’s encouragement the students learned to be quite vicious when it came to pushing someone else’s bottom out of a chair.
The last room featured “pumpkin” carving, where students put their creativity to work cutting out jack-o-lanterns.
All in all, it was several hours of mayhem and posing. While it may be hard to believe, I think I might have posed for more pictures than I took…which is quite a feat. While a constant onslaught of picture requests and large crowds is not necessarily my first choice for an evening’s activities, it was worth it to see such wide grins on the faces of the freshmen.
Looks like they all had a great time!
I always think of Halloween as being universal, and it’s not. Thanks for sharing the fun/culture with your students. It looks like they had a great time without trick or treating.
These pictures totally make me want to come join you! Looks like such a blast! My husband is going to China in May to teach English on a short-term trip–I’m jealous! And, these pictures remind me why! 🙂
Did you use your 50 for these?
You know I did, Aaron! I rarely take that lens off, unless forced to go to a wider angle. But the dim, fluorescent lights of the classrooms were quite challenging. I had my flash…but I admittedly have not learned how to utilize it to its full potential; I know I can get better shots with it. Do you give flash lessons? 🙂
Wait … you didn’t use a flash? I could tell by the sharpness and depth of field that you were using the 50, but was almost sure you combined the flash with it. Which is why I asked the question. I’ve been thinking about combining the 50 and the flash, and was wanting to ask someone with experience.
I could give Nikon lessons on flash. 🙂 But to be honest, unless I’m taking dedicated off-camera portraits, I just put the flash on TTL, point it at the ceiling, and shoot away. The camera does all the work.
About half of the above shots are with the flash, about half without. But I believe I could improve quite a bit with using the flash. I’ve played around some with the different settings, but definitely not enough to be able to use it manually & reliably to get the best possible shot. I try to avoid flash as much as possible…which the 50 makes it possible to do that.
Outside of a specific portrait setup, I don’t think it’s really possible to use the flash on manual mode and get anything reliable. Every time you move you change your lighting conditions.
I don’t really like the flash either, but I also don’t like high ISOs or sitting around hoping that my autofocus decides to actually find something. I usually just bounce it off the ceiling and move on. But I really need to try using the 50 with it. I’m disappointed with the lack of sharpness I’ve been getting from my all-purpose lens.
You & Aaron lost me w/ the photo lingo! My comment is on Abe – OMG – Seth looks so much like the real deal! The party was certainly a success – bet it was the talk of the campus!