Thread: Lighting a graveyard ?

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Every year i end up using a 75 watt floodlight or 2 and red and/or blue gels. But i'm never totally happy with the balance between enough lite and too much light. The colors generally don't light it up enough to show the detail, but white is too bright. The area is only about 20x20 feet.I'd like to hear any real good and not so obvious tricks anyone has learned about graveyard lighting.

Dazco,
It took me until just last night before I got the lighting in my graveyard correct. I'm using blue and green flood lights (6 in all) to illuminate most of the front yard and cast some eerie shadows across the house. I wouldn't think that you would have to use as many for your front yard and so you might be able to get away with half that amount. The important thing to remember is that you place the floods so that they point in. It can be a little blinding for the TOTs to have to approach your house with flood lights pointed at them like high beams. Another way (if you have the means) is to have light flood from above. Try placing your lights in a tree or off of your gutter so that they direct all light down...talk about some ghostly shadows. Before I got it right last night, I was so obsessed with hiding the lights (behind tombstones, rocks or trees), but now that it looks good, I could care less that they're out in the open. When I get the fog machines going and the strobes flashing, no one will even notice the obvious. When I get a chance, Dazco, I will post some pics here of my graveyard lighting. Good luck!


-fly

I am also having a graveyard this year. I bought a red flood light to light the scene. I do have a tree just about where I am having the haunt. So you think it would look better if I just put the light in the tree and had it shine down? It isn't a very big area so I thought one light would be enough. It's maybe a 8'x10' area. It's my first year. So I am starting out kind a slow.

I like the blue lights for the grave yard. It gives it the full moon glow. Use blue "floods" to light up the whole grave yard and your choice of "Spot" for details.

Thanks Fly. Sounds like a good idea putting them up. Only think is, whenever i try blue it never lights things up near enough, so i use red mostly and blue just to add to the look more than to make it easy to see.
Unfortunatly the trees we have are palms and the way they're situated makes it hard to aim a light from them onto the face of the GY. The house eve may work tho. What wattage do you suggest? 75-100 watts is what i usually have, but they are close to the GY. I guess hanging one from the roof eve would require much more power, eh?

im hiding my floodlights in trees, so they cast shadows.

sincerly,
Phantom.

"halloween is coming soon"

I bought clearanced red and green flood bulbs last year after xmas. I am getting alot of good responses from people about the great green glow and nothing about the red lights. I haven't tried blue yet.

I only have red and blue, but now i gotta try green after your post. You might find blue kinda worthless unless you get a high wattage bulb. I use gels instead of colored bulbs, so i can change colors w/o changing bulbs. But i find blue is very weak. It may be good for some mood, but it won't illuminate at all.

Keep in mind the type of bulb you use too. A "Flood" light is meant to fill an area with light. When you fill an area you lose a lot of the light because it is being dispersed. A "Spot" light is a directed beam. The light is more intense since it is focused. Floods you want to set a mood and spots you use to bring out detail or to draw an eye to something.

One trick that someone pointed out in another thread is to illuminate the area with white light and fill the illuminated area with the colored light. It makes the colors more intense and it keeps the eyes from getting used to it. This person found that when you used only a colored light your eyes adjust to it and eventually you stop seeing the color. Useing the white light and color fill kept your eyes from adjusting to it.

Blue light is at the bottom of the spectrum so it's no surprise that it doesn't apear as intense. It filters out a lot of natural light. This is why deep underwater film looks so blue. The water filters out almost all of the light except for the blue end of the spectrum.

we just did our lawn today, and all we used were blue lights...the result was fantastic. I didnt even hide the light fixtures, since I liked the effect so much, perhaps tomorrow I'll put sometype of covering (foil) then cover that with moss, that will help it blend in with the grass. I painted the tombstones with liquid Tide, which makes objects glow under blacklight, and even though I used blue light instead of blackllight, I still got a slight glow which gave the graveyard a moonlit glow effect. the light fixtures i used were the clamp on (without he clamp) and also some stake ones with 75watt regular base and 100 flood.
I did think about putting a white flood above, but decided against it since i had the effect I wanted. maybe that helps??