Horror genre photos

Originally, before the idea that I wanted to do a post-apocalyptic almost science-fiction film, I wanted to create a horror film. I was given the task of capturing and editing photos which reflect a certain genre of film, for example: comedy, romance or sci-fi. I chose horror, mainly because it is the genre that I am most familiar with since I watch a lot of horror-genre films, and also because, with the right editing or camera angles, a seemingly non-threatening landscape can become frightening or disturbing. Even simply distorting an image can transform it from a mundane photo to something unnerving.

The above photo is a long-shot of a staircase with what can only be described as a dark shape at the top of it. The camera was placed at the bottom of the stairs looking up the top of the staircase, in such an angle that it is unclear at first whether you are looking at the top of the staircase or the bottom at first glance. It is edited to look darker and contrast more than it originally did, which really shows the different shapes of the photo and adds some gritty realism to the photo. The fact that you are not aware what the shape at the top of the stairs is adds to the horror element, because I feel that when a person is left to imagine what something is, it becomes much more terrifying than a literal photo of something disturbing.

The above photo is a greyscale image of a door, with one occurance of colour - the red right in the middle of the door, around the handles. Once again, this image is somewhat vague as even though the suggestion is that the red splatter is blood, it could really be anything so the element of mystery remains. The image is obviously edited to become greyscale and to add the red, but it has also been changed to a higher contrast to make the image look darker and make shadows stand out more.

The above photo is a more literal, unsubtle kind of horror than the previous photos. The original image was simply of a hand reaching through the metal bars, but it has been edited to make the metal look more gritty and real and to make the hand look slightly unnatural in it's colouring which implies that the hand could belong to someone sick or maybe even not human. The part that makes the viewer think about this photo is the fact that it is obviously a horror photo yet they do not know whom the hand belongs to - is it reaching towards someone in a desperate attempt to grab them or is is trying to claw it's way out of the bars in an effort to get away, for example.