Double Exposure Photography Ideas
Double exposures sometimes happen by accident in old-fashioned film cameras that require the photographer to advance the film manually, such as the Holga plastic camera or a Brownie box camera. When these accidents happen, though, they're often magical and serendipitous: the overlapping images create something wonderfully abstract, or a ghost-like image appears on top of an unusual background, creating new meanings. You can make these photographic mysteries happen on purpose; photographers have been doing it since photography began in the 19th century. With digital photography, you can do it in the camera or in Photoshop.
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Film Cameras
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A film camera with manual film advancing, or one that uses sheet film rather than roll film, is perfect for double-exposure experiments. Take a light reading of the scene or subject. Decide on your aperture and shutter speed. Then divide that shutter speed in half. For example, if the exposure time is 1/60th of a second, you will have two exposures that are 1/120th of a second. Photograph the scene once at 1/120th of a second, and then put a person or a new object in the scene for the second exposure at the same aperture and shutter speed, without advancing the film. The person will appear as a ghostly image in the scene. You can also superimpose two totally different scenes on top of each other, for a more abstract effect.
Digital Camera
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With most digital cameras, you can't stack multiple exposures onto one "frame" as with a film camera. What you can do is make one long exposure at dusk or inside, with your camera on a tripod, and move people or objects in and out of the frame. If your digital camera has manual settings, arrange for it to make a long exposure of 8 seconds or so. Start the exposure of the scene with nobody in it. Then walk through the exposure yourself, or have a friend appear in it for a few seconds. This method also works for long exposures with film cameras. The figures will appear as transparent, ghostly images.
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QuistCam for the iPhone
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QuistCam is an app for the iPhone that allows you to superimpose an image on top of a photograph you've made with your phone. Download the app on to your phone. Then after you take a photograph, touch the "use" button, and the QuistCam app will choose a photograph of Hong Kong city life to superimpose on your image.
In Photoshop
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Perhaps the easiest way to make double exposures is to make them after the fact in Photoshop. You can use images from digital cameras, scanned film images, or both. To make a simple double exposure, open two images in Photoshop. On image one, create a new layer. Then on image two, select all or part of the image, and paste it into the new layer in image one. In the layers palette for image one, you will see an opacity slider at the upper left hand corner. Move the opacity slider for the new layer down until you like the way the image looks. The double exposure effect starts to show up at about 55 percent. Save.
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References
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