We would like to welcome Stephanie Granger to the blog today. She is a loyal, present, beautiful member of our community and we are grateful for her everyday. As an Unraveled Expert Artist, we hope that this is just the beginning for her here. What inspires us the most about Steph is her willingness to think outside the box and KEEP learning. She is always trying new techniques and sharing her art. Today she is going to be discussing how she creates her in-camera self portrait double exposures. Self portraits are difficult on their own – the setup, the focus, the lighting. But then to add in the double exposure element, it becomes even more challenging. This is a hard and trying technique to master so please give yourself grace and patience if you attempt these as well.

Steph, thank you for being here, sharing your knowledge and for your unwavering loyalty to Unraveled. We love you.

About the Author.

Stephanie is a Single Mother by Choice living in western Massachusetts. Her love of photography bloomed after having her son and wanting to document as much of his life as she could. She completed a 365 day project last year and still doesn’t allow her camera to stray too far from sight. Her love for photography deepened when she discovered how beautifully she could express herself through self portraits, especially when incorporating double exposure, and particularly when she didn’t feel beautiful at all.

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Our Top Tips for Creating Self Portraits and Double Exposures

I turned to double exposure in my images when I started to crave elevating my self portrait images. I would take a series of shots of just myself and feel as if something was missing or I wasn’t pushing the image enough. I am going to explain both my process for taking self portraits and how I then overlay a second image to create a double exposure.

The Process

When I take self portraits the very first thing I start with is light. I want to find light first and then see how I can play with that. Sometimes harsh light or shadows will add enough to the picture that I am satisfied with the image, but I was often finding that plain well lit photos of myself were lacking something. Seeing them as flat or not compelling enough, I turned to double exposure.

Interval Timer

For taking self portraits I prefer using my camera’s built in Interval Timer but you can also purchase a stand alone timer if your camera does not have one. The Interval Timer is my method of choice because I set up a shot and then run through a series of different poses before starting it over again. I set my timer to start immediately because sometimes running into the shot can be some of my favorite images. The camera will then take a set number of photos, a set number of times. I usually set mine for about 4-5 seconds which gives me time to move and readjust or change a pose. I have it take 2 images 12 times for a total of 24 images. I will then quickly check my camera to make sure my settings and focus were where I wanted them and see what I liked and didn’t. I will then go again, often my train of thought during this is, I’ll just do it one more time!

Image Overlay

I consider double exposure to be any form of layering photos. I shoot with Nikon and have both the option to take in-camera double exposures and to overlay images within the camera. Image Overlay is a feature in the Retouch Menu on Nikon cameras. It allows you to take two RAW images and overlay them exactly as they are and then create a jpg of the layered images. It does allow for a little more flexibility than a standard in camera double exposure because you can take the two pictures days, weeks, months apart and as long as you save the raws on the save memory card you can overlay them (although if you have a dual slot card you can pull images from two different cards). You can also decide the opacity of the images you overlay. So if you want one image to be more prominent than another you can adjust the levels of each image. You can also overlay multiple images in camera, if you layer another image over an overlaid one.

Combining Images

The nice thing about using Image Overlay for self portraits is that it allows me to pick the exact image of myself that I like within a series of pictures and then layer a picture directly on top of it. I typically will shoot self portraits first and then dream up a way to elevate the image later. Sometimes it will come to me right away like my rainbow picture, sometimes it will be days later like the tree blossom image. I have always been a big fan of puzzles so for me this is exciting because I try not to edit the photos in camera once I take them. So I will go and shoot a tree or a flower a dozen different ways, flip the camera upside down, shoot close up, further away, and try to give myself a dozen or more options of the same thing before overlaying them. Once the images are overlapped I then play with the opacity to make sure that the parts of the image I want highlighted are there to create the strongest image possible. If you do not shoot with Nikon you can also take two images in Photoshop and overlay them as well. If you bring in two images as their own layer each, go to the far left where Opacity is and where it says “Normal” choose “Screen”, it will act similar to image overlay and scale back the darker parts of your layer and allow you to see the layer below.

Editing

The one downside to in-camera Image Overlay is the image created is saved as a jpg image so when editing you don’t have the same level of control over editing them or your presets might look very different on these images than others in your set. The upside though is that, especially for self portraits, I have found that the addition of a layer can smooth and soften my skin and act as a clarity filter in a way and really requires less editing if you prefer softer skin/dreamer images. It can also save an underexposed image. If one of the two images you choose is underexposed it typically will lighten considerably when combining it with a second lighter image.

Creativity

The beauty of this technique is that you can use it with anything, not just self portraits. I have used this when photographing my son and am going to start incorporating it into client sessions as well. If you are feeling in a rut, I think it’s a great way to get creative! I’d love to see what you create with this feature, please tag Stephanie Granger if you upload anything into the student group and feel free to ask me questions! I have included a video of how to use an Interval Timer and the Image Overlay feature on the Nikon camera.