The Halloween Series Part 1: Not Really Michael Meyers

I know it’s been a minute since I’ve put a blog out there and while I could give plenty of valid excuses, let’s just say that I’ll do better. In the end it’s not really about the views or likes from these but just a way to put my thoughts out there. I’ve said it before and it’s funny to me every time that I actually say it out loud but, I hate reading. Legitimately I truly hate it, it’s so bad that even a paragraph is too much. I’ll start with the first two sentences and usually start skipping around to find the point. If you ever hear me say that I read something just know that it was probably a book on Audible (This is a game changer). Even with that in mind I still love to write. I know I know, I’m weird and it makes no sense yet here I am. 

Back to the point, Halloween sessions. Every year we get multiple people reaching out and asking when we are going to offer Halloween sessions again, and every year I have to let them down gently by saying probably never. It’s just not who we are anymore, we shot three very unique sessions that have been replicated time and time again over the last few years and we are proud of them, but again it’s just not us anymore. I still love all things halloween and horror but there’s no motivation to create the murder porn stuff these days. I’m certainly not knocking anyone that does it but there’s a lot that went in to these and we just don’t have the will power for it. 

It’s a funny thing when I think back about that very first Michael Myers shoot though. This was peak 2020 with the world going insane and we just wanted to do something fun. We really hadn’t seen anything like it at the time so we didn’t have inspiration to go off of. During those days I was still working full time but I was close to leaving, in fact I think the decision had been made by the day we were shooting. I remember working nights with Alyssa (the amazing human that collabed on all three shoots) at my old job and we would talk about this every day leading up to it. She is a complete fanatic when it comes to Halloween and the horror genre so the idea was an entire Halloween themed shoot. We planned all the things, pumpkin on the head, smoke bombs, spider webs, vintage vibe couch in the woods, graveyards….you get the point. The thing we were most excited for, Michael Meyers, really was an after thought. 

Shoot day rolls around and we explored idea after idea going shot for shot down the list. No lie we probably spent two hours shooting and somehow we almost forgot to do the Michael Meyers stuff. Thankfully we still had about 20 minutes of light left. We didn’t have a “Michael” so I had to stand in while I directed Rachel on the camera for the duo shots, no pun intended but she killed it. Back then Rachel wasn’t too far removed from being the photographer, prior to us starting Elevation she was the one behind the camera. The fun thing about this shoot is that Alyssa was never short of cool ideas and had made a hybrid Michael Myers costume. Her idea was to “Kill Michael” and then basically become him by wearing the mask. In the early days there were ZERO expectations of bringing an idea to life, there was no pressure and it showed. It was quick, easy and fun. Now it was time to edit. 

We rushed home that evening and got to work on editing. I threw together some quick edits that I sent over to Alyssa for her sign off, the only thing that mattered at the time was her sign off. She loved them and helped put together a “storyline” of images. I posted them late in the evening expecting the normal 1-2 shares and a few likes….. within 30 minutes it had been shared something like 800 times. I was shocked, like legit in disbelief that something we created could do that well. We all stayed locked to the computer screen for the next two days while that number grew. Somewhere around two days later the post was around 30,000 shares and garnered the attention of someone interesting. I’ll never forget being in a deep sleep midday recovering from night shift when Rachel bust through the bedroom door with Alyssa on speakerphone. At the time I was in such a fog that it didn’t make sense, Rachel was in the room but I was hearing another girl telling me that James Jude Courtney (Actor who plays Michael Meyers in the new Halloween movies) was sharing our post. I finally came to, freaked out with excitement and passed back out. Later that evening when I woke up I thought I had dreamt that, turns out it was true. I can’t even begin to say how cool it was. 

The post eventually died around 40-50,000 shares but inquires for Halloween sessions were never ending. True story, we even had a girl get a tattoo on her thigh of one of our images. The feeling we got from seeing this do as well as it did at a crucial time for our business was next level. Just a few months prior we had a local photographer try to shut down our business, then covid, then the uncertainty of whether this could support us in any meaningful way, now a semi viral post and more inquiries than we could handle. Excitement was palpable and we were riding a high unlike any we’d experienced. I learned a lot from this, for one, never read the comments. It was loved but picked a part just as much. Apparently my commanding height of 5’8” was not enough for Michael Meyers. I ended up commenting back on one informing them that it was in fact not Michael Meyers but his illegitimate child.  Apparently he doesn’t wear a wedding ring and sure, the mask we used was terrible but in the end we were happy with the result.