doubleexposure

In the past, double exposing film was one of the most popular special effects used in photography, and often could be hit or miss. The idea was to combine two (or more) photos into the same image.

The resurgence of interest in film photography is astonishing. Newcomers revel in the challenge of having only a limited number of photos per roll. They enjoy the suspense of waiting a lengthy period for the film to be processed before they see whether their photos have turned out.

Polaroid has announced the Polaroid Now+, a new camera that packs in a ton of new features, but only allows access to them through the company's smartphone app.

Lomography sells a neat accessory for its Lomo'Instant camera called the Splitzer that lets you split your shots with multiple exposures. If you use the popular Fujifilm Instax Mini 90, there's now a "Splitzer" for you.

Belle Ame is an ongoing series by award-winning macro photographer Matt Doogue featuring macro double exposure photos of insects created in-camera.

Photographer Eric Floberg made this 10-minute video showing how he creates in-camera double-exposure photos using a tilt-shift lens, a technique he calls his "creative bread and butter."

Finnish photographer Christoffer Relander shot a mesmerizing and surreal series of photos in which he used multiple-exposure photography to blend views of Hong Kong cityscapes and Scandinavian nature. With a focus on neon signs, the project is titled, "Neonland: Urban Overload."

One of the many marvelous photography techniques provided by analog photography is the double (or multiple) exposure of film directly on camera. I've always been fascinated by the possibility of handling the negative from the moment of shooting, and this factor was the key one for me when it came the time to chose a camera.

Several years ago I developed a technique that I use for light painting in which I take a king size bed sheet and light paint through it to create my images. I recently created this 10-minute video tutorial explaining in detail how to achieve this creative effect.

I recently shot a series of double exposure photos of the band I Don’t Know How But They Found Me at The Knitting Factory, and they've received a great response. So, I thought it would be worth explaining how I took them!

The artistic effect created by compositing images in a double exposure is certainly nothing new, but the masking techniques learned in constructing this kind of image in Photoshop are valuable in all sorts of post-production. This 9-minute video from Eye Stocker will show you how to combine a portrait of a woman with a photo of pine trees.

If you have a film or digital camera that can shoot double exposures, there's a free do-it-yourself accessory you can use to get creative with the technique: it's the half lens cap.

We've seen some pretty interesting and quirky photography-themed tattoos in the past—from lens diagrams to a Canon "L" red ring tattoo. But tattoo artist Andrey Lukovnikov's work isn't photography-themed, it's photography-inspired... double exposure photography-inspired to be exact.

My name is Cooper Neill, and I'm a freelance photographer based in Dallas, Texas. I've found that sports photography can be an extremely challenging creative endeavor. At every game, there are several photographers, all with the same equipment, sitting in the same spots along the sidelines. When you're sitting in those same seats in the same arenas several times a week for a few years, it can make work very repetitive.

As a photographer I started seeing the games the same way night after night getting my standard images and nothing else. To get myself out of a creative funk, during blowouts, I started shooting 35mm film, then rewinding the film and shooting over it for a second time - creating double exposures.

My name is Piotr Skoczylas, and I am a surreal portrait photographer. I picked up a camera 3 years ago, and since that moment I knew I wanted my pictures to be something more than just the click of the shutter. I was experimenting for a really long time until I created something I really liked, and with which I could connect emotionally.

Here's a step-by-step look at how I created one of my best multiple exposure portraits using Photoshop.

Scouting the world to find the perfect shot is one of photography’s pure joys. You discover the perfect moment, carefully frame your viewfinder, and press the shutter button. Within a fraction of a second, the world is seemingly pulled in through your lens: striking your film or sensor to create an everlasting impression.

However, what would happen if you fired the shutter a second time and created another impression over the first? You would create a double exposure: two images combined within a single frame. Let’s take a look and see how these artful creations come to fruition through a bit of simple ingenuity.

This starry double exposure-style photograph was made using a single long exposure. Photographer Ted Schiele was 190 seconds into a long exposure photo of the night sky when he heard a car coming down the road. He then pointed his camera down towards the car and exposed the camera for another 13 seconds as it approached.

Florida-based photographer Brandon Kidwell has been working on a lifelong project called "Wisdom for My Children." It's a series of beautiful double exposure photos that resulted from real experiences Kidwell went through while raising his kids. Each of the images "is symbolic of some piece of advice that I gave them," he writes.

The photograph above is for the message: "Being free means having the courage to let go."

Photographer Eric Kunz has created a new iPhone app that makes it easy to create high-quality double exposure photographs using your phone. It's called LiveBlend, and Kunz claims that it's the only app currently in the App Store that does double exposure blending in real time.

In the world of analog photography, "film swapping" is an activity in which two photographers each shoot through the same roll of film, creating random -- and often beautiful -- double exposure photographs in each frame.

dubble is an app that wants to bring that same experience to the world of digital photography. It allows people from around the world to create random double exposure photos with each other.

Being forced to pull a loose, already-exposed roll of 35mm film out at a security checkpoint in a foreign country might seem like a disaster, and in most ways it is, but that's also the circumstance that led to this beautiful image by photographer Gavin Johnstone.

While double-exposure photography all started in-camera – most likely by accident – it’s since become an actual style and genre of photography all its own. And while it can still be done in-camera through film or a number of DSLRs that offer the capabilities, it can also be done in Photoshop. Here to show us how is wedding photographer Andrew Klokow, with a quick and efficient workflow for nailing double-exposures in post-production.

Inspired by the beautiful ink-in-water photography of Alberto Seveso -- who, by the way, we've featured many times on PetaPixel, so definitely check that out -- South African artist and photographer Chris Slabber recently put a spin on ink photography the likes of which we've not seen before.

Using his skills as a digital artist, he combined the genres of ink photography and double exposure portraits to create something that, in the interest of avoiding photography word inflation, is both good and beautiful (but not 'stunning' or 'brain paralyzing').

After sharing Paul Trillo's double exposure-inspired music video for "Be Around" by the folk duo The Peach Kings, several commenters here and on Facebook pointed out that the opening titles for the HBO show True Detective make use of the same technique.

And so we checked them out, and were blown away by the execution on this awesome video. We can see why one reader said that it's the only show she doesn't skip over the titles on.

From NYC-based filmmaker Paul Trillo, whose work we've featured a couple of times before here on PetaPixel, comes a new visual journey in collaboration with Los Angeles-based soul-folk duo The Peach Kings.

Photographer Jan Von Holleben specializes in imaginary awesomeness, creating scenes that whisk you away to a different place where random objects can be used to turn dreams into reality.

For his most recent project, however, he and his friends set about doing something even more difficult than bringing 'Dreams of Flying' to life: they're trying to save the universe... with imaginary machines, of course.

Late in 2012, photojournalist Daniella Zalcman moved from New York City to her new home in London. Zalcman adores both cities for, among other things, their photogenic nature. And so she decided to mix the two together into a creative series of double exposures dubbed New York + London, using her smartphone.

San Francisco-based photographer and self-proclaimed super nerd Doctor Popular -- the same one that made this film canister valentines day card back in February -- started off his photographic career with an iPhone. Unlike many photographers, he moved backwards, eventually purchasing a film camera "strictly out of curiosity" at a yard sale and shifting his focus more and more to film.

His most recent endeavor, Glitch Double Exposures, mixes the two worlds of digital and analog by combining street photos with photos of purposely glitched images into ethereal double exposures.

Cameras today have many extra functions that are often buried in menus and forgotten. Last year, I bought the Canon 5D Mark III and, after a few months, realized that there were some interesting features I had never played with. After figuring out that there was a way to do in-camera double exposures, I immediately started experimenting. At first it was very hit and miss. (I still hadn’t read the manual.)

One method for capturing "multiple exposure" photographs is to shoot a long exposure photograph of a scene with your camera pointed in different directions while the shutter is open. Photographer Nicolas Ruel uses this concept in an ambitious project that has taken him around the world. Titled 8 Seconds, the series features famous cities around the world (e.g. New York City, Tokyo, Beijing, Barcelona) captured in surreal multi-exposure photographs.

When the engineering students and staff of King's College in London gathered together to take a faculty portrait, the photographer used an old camera that panned from left to right in order to capture an extremely long panorama of the entire group in one frame. It worked a bit like the panorama features on modern smartphones: start the exposure on one side of the frame, and then gradually sweep the camera across the scene while everyone in the frame stays as still as possible.

People vs. Places is a creative collaborative photo project by photographers Timothy Burkhart and Stephanie Bassos. They create double exposure photos by each shooting the same roll of film, but with a neat twist: they each stick to a theme:

This double exposure project allows us to step back from having full control of the image making process and trust in one another while allowing coincidences to happen naturally on film. Stephanie exposes a full roll of 35mm film of only "people," and Timothy reloads the film again into the same camera, to imprint only "places" and locations to the same roll. These images are all the end result of our ongoing series and are unedited negatives straight from the camera.

Thus, each image shows a randomly created clash between a photo of a person and a photo of a place.

We've shared a number of examples of surreal images created using multiple exposure techniques or by combining images using Photoshop, but did you know that you can also create beautiful images by stacking actual film negatives? Photographer Laina Briedis did some experiments with 35mm film stacking, and achieved some stunning results. She combined photos of stars and sky with pictures of people, creating images that look like they were plucked from someone's dreams.

We Are Nature is an awesome portrait project by photographer Christoffer Relander of Raseborg, Finland. He used a Nikon D700 for in-camera multiple exposures and then made small contrast and tone adjustments in post for his surreal portraits.

Here's a tutorial by photographer Stephen Davies on how you can create a pseudo double exposure photograph using a couple simple steps in Photoshop.