ISO 800 | 50mm | f 2.8 | 1/250 sec

Wanted to challenge myself with something a little different this week.  I’ve seen examples before of double-exposures which combine humanity and nature together in one seamless image (my images presented here are not really all that unique).  However, I wanted first of all to see if I was even capable of taking decent shots for a double-exposure, and secondly I wanted to see if I could replicate the effect realistically in photoshop (double-exposures are traditionally done with film by exposing one frame twice, thus overlaying one image over the top of the other).  I wasn’t sure if I could achieve a similar effect or not.  As it turned out, it was easier than I anticipated.

The secret I discovered to achieving this cool effect has a lot to do with where the highlights and shadows are in your two images.  Since the exposure of film and digital sensors works by going from complete black to complete white, you need to consider what parts of your image are going to be fully exposed (white) and which parts are not going to be fully exposed (darker areas) thus allowing the second exposure to expose over the original shot (your secondary image can only expose on parts of the original image that have not been fully exposed).  In these two images, you see that the nature shots are only visible within the shape of my subject.  This is because she was shot against a white backdrop, thus fully exposing everything in the original frame except her, leaving only her dark form for the second image to expose over.

In photoshop it was quite easy.  First of all I made sure that my portrait shot’s highlights were fully clipped (completely exposed, pure white), then I took my second image (a tree against a gray sky/dirt road) and placed that layer over top of my portrait.  I then set the blending mode of my top layer to Screen, which affects the opacity of my top layer (essentially, anywhere where the bottom layer is 100% white, the top layer will be 0% opaque, anywhere where the bottom layer is 0% white (black), the top layer will be 100% opaque, and the same goes for all the in-between values as well – 50% white, 50% opaque, 25% white, 75% opaque, etc.).

So basically what I discovered is that photoshop actually makes it very easy to create double-exposures, and taking images for double-exposures can be fun to shoot.  So anyways, I hope you learned something and maybe even got inspired to try one of these out for yourself.  I think you could have a lot of fun with this, and the great thing is that the possibilities are practically endless!  So go have some fun…

ISO 800 | 50mm | f 2.8 | 1/250 sec