Illumination Complication
Last year, I struggled with finding the right lighting for the graveyard display of our family’s Halloween home haunt. Nothing really seemed to fit my needs properly. I finally settled on a pair of red landscaping flood lights on ground spikes. The look was okay from afar, but up close it proved to be a pretty big distraction. The lenses were so bright that they, from any angle besides straight on, instantly became the focal point of the whole display. Since this portion of my home haunt was designed to be viewed from both the front and one side, this proved to be a pretty big problem.
There were a few other documented issues with my lighting choice as well. The lights, which are designed to be stuck in the ground and angled up toward their targets, needed to be angled so that the bulb was nearly touching the ground. This left the hot bulb too close to the blanket of maple leaves that my children and I hauled over from my neighbor’s yard. It also would have left the light below the fog, had I been able to run my fog machine, causing the light to illuminate the fog instead of the props. My only solution to that was to mount the lights to the Cemetery Fence, which only increased the distraction factor. In the end, high winds and torrential rains left the first Halloween in our new home as quite the dissappointment, so the lighting was of little consequence.
Our 2010 Halloween season however, was not a complete disaster. The issues I encountered with the our haunt illuminated several factors that I had not thought of prior, and provided fuel to seek out better solutions. Early this year I came across a post for LED Spotlights written by Jason at Haunt The Yard. Jason, in a interesting string of events, discovered a means to create a low cost DIY light that is perfect for illuminating props. At a cost of about $3.00 each, these are a great off season project that can be made with very little experience. I plan to cover the build process of these spotlights here in our projects section, but I highly recommend you have a visit to Haunt The Yard and give the creator his just deserts.
One Response “Illumination Complication”
Jeff and I have been using mini LED spotlights in our yard for about 5 years. They are one of the best things that we ever did for the diplay. There are over 80 of them in the yard and they all run on two 12volt power supplies. They hold up well in the rain and they never get hot.
Although we got ours from Minispot, it is a great off season project for making your own if you have the time. You are going to love them! Looking forward to seeing how they look in your haunt this year!
Cheers!