Double Exposure and Multiple Exposure Photography

Hello Students,

For your final you will be exercising two artistic photography techniques, double exposure and multiple exposure.

Assignment Requirements:

• Create a double exposure image or portrait
• Create a multiple exposure image or portrait. Must contain at least 4 exposures/images combined into 1
• Due Wednesday

What is Double Exposure?

Double exposure with a traditional film camera involved exposing 2 different images to 1 piece of film. The effect creates an overlay of 2 images into 1, the areas of dark and light combine. With digital camera's we can take 2 different photos and combine them into 1 by using Photoshop's layers. See examples below:

Composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, double exposure made using a film camera, 1980 by Claude Truong-Ngoc / Wikimedia Commons 

Double exposure made using a film camera

What is Multiple Exposure?

Multiple exposure is when a camera is timed to take an exposure at different intervals of time, creating a series of images into 1 image. With a digital camera we can take multiple images and combine them with photoshops layers and some clever use of the Eraser Tool. See examples below:

A multiple exposure image created with photoshop

A multiple exposure composite image of a lunar eclipse taken over Hayward, California in 2004.

Artistic Double Exposure Portraits

When you pay attention to the light and dark areas you can have some amazing results with double exposure. Photoshop lets us combine and erase and change the way our layers blend together. Try to achieve an artistic effect. Can you figure out how the images below were created? The examples below were created by the artist Dan Mountford.

Student Work Samples: Double and Multiple Exposures