Multiple Exposures / Double Exposure (In-camera or Photoshop) for Abstract & Artistic Portraits Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

Hey guys, Chelsea here, and today by request I wanted to teach you a bit about multiple exposures.
In this video I'm going to show you how to do it in camera
Cause that's my favorite way.
And also how to do it in post-processing.
But before I start, I wanted to show you where the multiple exposure was born.
and the way I was first taught how to do a multiple exposure
and that was on film.
And so I brought a piece of film from my first multiple exposure
So that you can see how they're made
and if you see here
the first exposure
that I took is completely
clear where Tony is sillhouetted
and the second one has the newspaper writing in it, and that's the final multiple exposure.
So I just wanted to show you this to show you how they're made, because
I think that if you have an idea of how they're made, you can more intelligently
produce on and not just sort of shoot around
randomly and see what works.
If you look at this you can see that
everything that's black in your photo, everything that you sillhouette
is going to be "clear"
digitally, in film it's literally clear,
in your digital camera it's just going to show through everything in your second exposure.
So this was the finished picture that I took of Tony.
I do have a Nikon here and I have a Canon so I was just going to show you how to navigate the menu systems.
I'm using the Nikon D810, your menu system might be different.
You go to menu and then you go down to this camera here
and to multiple exposures, make sure that it's "on"
then you're good to go. You just have to take two consecutive pictures
and they'll be a multiple exposure.
Let me show you how to do it with your Canon.
I'm using a Canon 7D Mark II
but I know that it's the same on the Mark III as well.
So you hit this art button here with the little paint brush
and you go to this second one and that's multiple exposure
select it, turn it on
and do "additive."
So I'll take my first picture of Tony
And if you need a refresher on taking a silhouette, you want to backlight your subject and then it helps to also put your
exposure compensation down a few stops.
You don't need a white background, you don't need a studio
you can use the sky on a sunny day, on a clear day
and just shoot low and silhouette your subject.
Or you can use someone in front of a window like I'm doing
but you'll have a more cluttered background this way
I don't really mind having some texture to the background
and having some context, so that's what I'm doing.
Tony, will you lift your drink, so I have that in the picture?
Will you lift it with your other hand so your hand's not in the way of the drink?
Thank you. So now that you have a silhouette picture that you like,
use the art button here
go to your second option
and make sure that your multiple exposure is on
press set, okay, and next you want to select your silhouetted picture.
So I like this picture of Tony so I'll press set
okay, and then the picture I take after that will be merged with that silhouette.
One thing you want to make sure is that
your exposure for your second picture is good.
So you want to make sure that your exposure compensation isn't still down for your silhouette
so make sure it's right in the middle
Then I'm going to find my second subject.
So I scavenged around my kitchen a little bit and I found some flowers that might work for my second exposure
and some peanuts.
I don't know what that really has to do with you, Tony.
He's nuts.
So let me take my second picture and see how it comes out.
The peanuts came out okay, but they don't really make a lot of sense.
Tony's drinking out of a mug, and then
what, peanuts in the background?
That doesn't make sense. It would make more sense if it all came together
like this one I did of him with his cup and coffee.
Or the one I did of my friend Siobhan and a microphone.
So it takes a lot of creativity to make one of these too
so think about your whole story and combine your two pictures in a thoughtful way.
So now that you know how to do your in-camera multiple exposure,
let's go to my desk and I'll show you how to do one in post.
So I'll show you the two pictures that I chose and why
First I have this picture of Siobhan
and I chose it because, well, I really like Siobhan, but also
but also because it's blown out and we have some really nice light coming through her hair
and it's like the opposite of a silhouette
these don't have to be silhouetted.
and the second exposure that I'm going to blend her with is
this picture of flowers that I took
just for this purpose
and you can see the background doesn't have to be perfect
It's pretty much blown out in the background, but
you can see like my door and stuff
it doesn't matter- I'm gonna show you why.
So let's select this image with Ctrl A
And then Ctrl or Cmnd C to copy
we'll go into the image of Siobhan
and do Ctrl V to paste
and it's on top of her layer
and then we'll go to screen
And you can see it's see-through, so we're going to drag this
over her and position it in a way
that I think looks good.
There's so many different ways to do this
you can find so many tutorials online
so many different ways to blend the layers
but I like this way. It's more organic, it's super easy
and I think it's more reminiscent of the spirit of the film multiple exposures.
I'm actually going to adjust this layer a little bit
and make it a bit bigger
Cause I like this little V here, how it shows her necklace
I like that it ends, I like the shape, these little random flowers
I'm gonna press enter
And then, there are some things I'd like to clean up
So you can see that her
eyes are obstructed and I'd like to make them a bit more clear
and I might clean up the edges a little bit.
Let's see, when you zoom out.
So I'm going to create a layer mask
for this layer of flowers
and now it's all white
and I have black selected. I'll go to my paint brush
and I'm going to use Ctrl + to zoom in
the flow is at 50 percent, so just kind of
you don't want it to be really clear
That looks better to me.
And then there's a little bit here
so I'm going to go into the layer of Siobhan and press Ctrl J to duplicate the layer
and then I'll make another layer
and put it underneath that one
I'm going to make this layer all white
because I want this to be white
and I want to put a layer mask on Siobhan's layer
so there has to be something white under there.
Now I can add a layer mask.
I'm just going to put my opacity down a bit.
Because I want to just blend this away.
And I'm not going to worry about anything down here because I'm going to be cropping it out.
This looks a little bit washed out to me,
So another thing you can do is select your bottom picture
if you have a washed out picture like the one that I chose
and you can add a curve layer to it.
And then, you pull it down in the middle and it adds just a bit more contrast.
So I like that. And then finally,
I want to crop out everything below here, and I just want my image to be
her beautiful face, overlayed with flowers with the white background.
So I'm going to merge my layers,
and then crop.
So I really like the way that this turned out, and I can't wait to show Siobhan!
If you want to learn more about photography,
you should check out our book, Stunning Digital Photography.
It's $9.99 for the ebook, it comes with 9 hours of video
It's a great deal. And if you want to learn more about post-processing in Lightroom
you can check out our Lightroom 5 book. Thank you!