Day Lilly and Scarlet Lychnis

Posted: July 27, 2009 
Filed under: Floral
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This is a multiple exposure of a Day Lilly growing around a boulder and some rocks arranged in a small lily, tulip, poplar sapling and wild violet gathering and the scarlet lychnis that grew beside them all.  A blade of light pierced through the poplar canopy to illuminate the lychnis alone, providing a dark backdrop on which to splash the green behind the Day Lilly exposed to the afternoon sun’s glaring rays.  Its oddly bleached and glowing colour contrasts the deep, rich palette of the lychnis.

Multiple exposures can be very tricky business, and for those of you interested in attempting these kinds of shots, be advised that it is going to take quite a lot of trial and error.  However, once you do get the hang of it, ME’s are a very handy technique to have in your repertoire.  I have yet to try out ME’s on my digital Nikon D200, but I can explain how to do this technique using a film camera.  Note: not all digitals or films cameras can perform this technique.  If your camera is equipped to do ME’s (check your camera’s manual), here’s how it will work: your film camera’s film forwarding lever will have a catch that you will be able to release.  Normally, when you advance the film, the camera simultaneously advances the film to the next frame and cocks the shutter to be ready for the neck shot.  However, for a ME, you release a catch so that the camera only cocks the shutter, but does not advance the film to the next frame.  This allows you to expose the same frame twice!  That’s the easy part…The hard part is deciding how to expose the photograph.  Because you are exposing the film twice, you need to use half the light each time you expose the film (for a double exposure anyways, but doing three or four exposures becomes even trickier!).  Another note: a 1 stop change in aperture, shutter speed or film speed literally halves or doubles the light reaching your film.

So this is what you do for a double exposure like this photo: for your first exposure, you take a light reading of your subject as you want it to look — meaning if you want it under- or overexposed, make sure you have your corrections in mind when choosing your exposure values! Once you know how much light is required for a normal exposure, you need to halve that value.  You can do this by increasing your f-stop (say, from f/8 to f/16),  or your shutter speed (for example, from 1/125 to 1/250).  This one stop change effectively halves the light.  Your camera will now tell you that you’re underexposing the shot: that’s fine!  Ignore it.  Snap the shutter.  Now, release the catch, and cock the shutter again.  Choose your next subject, and arrange it properly.  That is, unless it’s your intention to do so, don’t overlap the subjects (you might want to draw out your composition as you’re arranging it so you know where each previous subject was in the frame).  Also of very important note that subjects will come out clearly when put against a black background, but will appear bleached if you have light exposing the film where your first subject was.  This means that, for your second exposure, you want to put a dark background behind your first subject.  If there is a light background behind where your first subject was, it will make your subject appear ghostly.  See my photo Arias in the portraits category for an example of this effect.

For your second exposure, you do the same as the first.  Take your light readings, and reduce it in half.  Sounds complicated? It is and it gets worse!  This procedure is just a general rule of thumb.  Halving the exposure value does not guarantee that the ME will come out correctly.  Sometimes, you need to reduce it further or less.  It really depends on the subjects your composing, how you’re composing them, and against what backgrounds you’re composing them.  Again, it is going to require lots of practice, lots of trial and error, and lots of patience.  And again, you are going to need to be able to improvise and adapt!

It gets even more complicated when you try to do three or four exposures on the same frame.  The same principles apply, though.  For each additional exposure, you need to halve the light reaching the film.  So, if you’re doing three exposures on the same frame, reduce your shutter speed by two stops from correct exposure for every exposure.  And always remember to keep your composition in mind, choose your backgrounds carefully, and never give up if it fails!  Simply try again!