The Castle of Horror pictures have been posted on the Haunted Attraction Pictures page.
The attraction wasn't too bad; I posted the public version of my thoughts about it on the Castle of Horror's page for 10-15. Check it out.
As for my private thoughts, I have two: opposites and dust.
Opposites: I commented on this on the picture page as well. Haunted Forest was the only haunted attraction I had photographed thus far and Woods of Terror was the only other attraction I have attended (excepting a short, not too well done attraction in High Point one year). Both attractions were of the trail variety, meaning covering lots of ground, spaced out, and lit by stray light and/or the moon. Getting to and from one particular place took some time and it was difficult. On the other hand, I had taken it for granted how easy it was to know the location of the next group to pass a spot.
Castle of Horror was almost exclusively indoors. I must say they used the space well and I offer my praise for being able to coordinate something like that so groups don't see or hear each other. Secret passageways were well camouflaged and I could easily get to one location to another without running into a group. While that was a good thing, the confined space meant I ended up with less room to shoot. I have a small wide angle lens, 24mm (standard lenses are 35mm). I really do think I could do more with a wider lens because my 24mm one was barely enough. Looking on eBay, I found 10mm and 17mm lenses. I already bought a lens this month and I will not buy another $400-600 lens for an activity I am doing free of charge as it is.
Equipment aside, back to the comment about the "confined space". To include everything in a picture, I had to back up against walls. The small space also meant I was easily noticed and the crowd less scared. Instead, I ended up putting the camera on the tripod and hooking my remote control to it. That was fairly interesting. It had never really helped to rely on the remote control and being out of line of sight to take pictures before. No sight isn’t a big thing; you just time it by the sound and the general timing of when the scare occurs. Still, I never really had much experience with predicting the angle, focus, and such beforehand and triggering it with the remote control and a sense of timing. I think this experience might be pretty good for me.
Dust: The second of my private thoughts concerning the attraction. There was a lot of dust. I really sympathize with the person playing the "pet" in the torture chamber since she was the closest to the ground and inhaled a lot more of it than anyone else. It ended up giving her a bad headache. I wasn't lying on the picture page when I stated guests don't have to worry about it, either; it took me a few hours before I noticed my camera was completely covered in dust. Fortunately, my lens hood kept the dust away from that area. But wow, I don't even want to think what would have happened if I exchanged lenses on my SLR while in those rooms! I had enough trouble getting all the small stuff out of the camera when a cloud hit Pilot Mountain. Anyway, there really isn't much one can do about the dust in there. It’s actually favorable, though, because large amounts of dust give the place more character. I certainly can't fault that.
With those two comments, would I go back after this year? Sure. The small space gives me another good challenge and the dust can be ignored or minimized by going outside and drinking something at once or twice during the shoot. As I said on the picture page, if that's all the stuff I didn't like, they're doing well. Now that I have been there shooting once, I can let fly the mental wheels to come up with something creative and figure out how to line up better shots. As they say, the more you do it... (To those at work: Don't even think of 1000 monkeys!)
