My Master Class students have been asking how a certain photographer achieves a certain look. They describe their work as ICM (Intentional Camera Movement). I hate acronyms at the best of times, but the problem with intentional camera movement is that It is a technique, one of many that gives similar looks. I tell my students over and over that it isn’t the technique that defines what you do, it is what you do.

You need to learn as many techniques as you can, learn them as well as you can, so you can use them at will whenever you feel like it. It has helped me to learn the techniques so I can create certain looks. While I can’t say I have mastered them all, I have tried hard to learn them.

Once you learn multiple techniques you can then start to combine them together to get unique looks.

So this week we are going to explore the technique I would use to get his look. Multiple exposures blended in various ways allows you to add multiple looks to the one photograph easily.

Multiple exposures is a complex area of photography. It started for me, by accidentally not winding the film on correctly as I had bumped the little knob on my camera that allowed you to only advance the shutter. The first multiple exposures were clearly mistakes. Latter I reloaded exposed films into my film holders and accidentally created some fantastic works of art. I actually submitted one to the Olive Cotton Awards, but it didn’t get through the selection committee. They must not have seen its brilliance, as like the rest of the world, environmentalism isn’t apparently a big enough issue. (lol - sorry, but is is a rather familiar story in my history as an artist).

There are a few different ways to achieve multiple exposures.

1. Expose your film multiple times

2. Sandwich multiple negatives together in your enlarger

3. Expose your photographic paper in different enlargers with different negatives. This is what Jerry Uelsmann does https://www.uelsmann.net/

4. Use the multiple exposure function on your camera

5. Blend multiple exposures together on your computer, tablet or smart phone (photoshop, and multiple apps have this feature)

6. Use multiple exposure camera apps on your phone or your tablet (Average Camera Pro is an iphone app that allows you to set how many multiple exposures you would like to stack, up to 128)

7. One long exposure, stopping to allow a latent image to form then moving the camera to add secondary movements to add extra elements to the one image.

As you can see there are so many ways to do this. You will inevitably won’t be able to figure out how someone has done these, unless they specifically tell you.

When it comes to doing them in your camera, each camera manufacturer has a different system and way of implementing it. Canon and Nikon have the ability to blend many photographs and use different blending modes. Many photographers who love multiple exposures keep a Canon just because it does it so well. Other manufactures please take note. Fuji allows you to take only two consecutive images on top of each other. Panasonic and Olympus allows you to take two consecutive photographs, or choose one from your memory card and add over it. By continually to select the last multiple exposure image you can keep adding more exposures to it. Cameras with a stacked high resolution mode can also be used for multiple exposure photography. This is a very restrictive method that has a gorgeous random element to it.

One thing that many photographers don’t consider, is that you can change the exposure, focus, aperture, shutter speed, lens and white balance between each photograph, and hence change each of the layers.

So this week I want you to explore multiple exposures as a technique and see what you can do. See what you can learn. See what you can create.

To make this a learning experience for others, I would like you to describe how you achieved your photograph. So some technical details as to which camera you have used, or which software you used, or which method you used will be helpful to go with each photograph.

To make them easier to read, just put one photograph and the technique with it, and then start another post with another photograph and technique in it. It just makes it easier to read and comment on, and for the discussion to flow more freely.

For the two hundred plus people who read these exercises, I do encourage you to join in the discussion in the comments bellow. For this is where there is some fantastic learning each week. It is the learning community that is growing here, where the most interesting learning is taking place.

Click on the photographs bellow to see them in full screen LightBox mode so you can see exactly what is going on..

Photographs and text copyright © Len Metcalf 2019