It was probably evident in last night’s shot that I was aiming for something on the macabre side. I wonder if there are things I can do to enhance the gothishness a bit. So I played around a little and came up with these four alternate takes.
First, let’s leave Ed as is and desaturate the background.
Next, let’s try a motion blur on the background to see if we can get a little vertigo/disconnectedness going on.
Hmmm. What if we combine the two?
Finally, let’s colorize the background with some cliched sick horror flick green.
I don’t know what I think. But this should be a lesson to simple country horses. Stay on the farm where the pastures are wide open and the grass is free. Nothing good comes from city life.
5280 Lens Mafia 
I go for number 3. Short of having one of the Killer Clowns from Outer Space in the shot, you have achieved creepy horse very well.
I liked the original post much better Sam. The lights and busy gilding set the carnival atmosphere with the leering devil horse rounding it out nicely. None of these carry that malevolent energy for me.
Hilarious post! I kinda like the one with the black and white background. All fun though!
#2 makes me nauseous, but blurred, horror movie green gets me every time. I wonder how many children have looked at this horse and gone screaming to mama.
The kids last night seemed to be loving the whole experience. Twisted little fucks.
I vote for the original. But these are funny.
The green one takes creepy to to new high. These are evil. Well done.
While I like the green one, the real horror comes to me when you combine Ed with a true-color background in motion (#2). It is creepy Ed, showing us a real world made creepy. To me, having the familiar turn on you is pure awful.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. Much to consider.
I was really, really waiting for Greg’s response. When it comes to creeping people out, he’s sort of how I calibrate my meters. Denny lived with us for two years and can probably understand why I say this. So his comment about “having the familiar turn on you” struck a chord. I also felt like, from everyone else’s reactions, like maybe I have the blur effect overdone a little.
So I tried one more. In a way, I tried to reproduce what happens to my vision pretty much every morning (long story, but degenerative vestibular disorders fuck you up). In essence, the blur is almost imperceptible, except that you’d be amazed how little static it takes to make it hard to see and read. So the background here is a minor vibration, almost. Static. Just enough, I hope, to be unsettling, but not so much as to be over-obvious and disrtracting.