Fun with Double Exposures… Sorta

I was reading a photography magazine recently and came across an article about digital double exposures. The idea was quite simple but unfortunately I don’t have the necessary software to do it as they suggested. So I did my own thing (as usual). Now, in the pre-digital days, a double exposure involved taking a picture, then carefully and precisely rolling back the film to the exact same spot, and taking it again, or ‘tricking’ your camera into NOT advancing and then snapping another picture over top of the first one. This needs to be done on a tripod with absolutely NO movement from the first to second picture.

With the coming of digital photography, a few things became easier, and a few become harder. First off, shutter-less compact cameras have no inner movement which can cause the camera to shift, they can take numerous pictures without worrying about wasting film, and they [sometimes] come with remotes, which is very useful for taking the digital equivalent of a double exposure. Unfortunately, you can’t take a true double exposure as there is no film to wind back. So the magazine I read explained how to use some software to overlay 2 pictures and get [essentially] the same effect. As I mentioned, I don’t have such software, so I made do. I used Microsoft Publisher and a little cleverness.

I positioned my camera on the tripod and found a backdrop that would be easy to ‘blend’ (which ended up being the hardwood floor in my kitchen). I took a few pics of the same background with me in several different positions, and then hopped on the computer to make the blend. First thing to note is that your compact digital MUST be on manual mode, or else you may get differences in the lighting in your pictures. So I picked the two pictures that worked best together, corpped part of each and stuck them together. If you look briefly, it looks good, however on deeper inspection, I bet you can find the line where I joined them. Try it yourself! I look forward to seeing your results.

Edward, SSE Ohtsu