How to: create Multiple Exposure images ‘In the Round’ style
Multiple Exposure Photography image from Bushy Park, London
What is Multiple Exposure ‘In the Round’ ?
The amazing Pep Ventosa called his series of images created whilst walking around trees ‘in the round’ and I guess that's what most people would call this technique. It basically consists of lots of layers of the same subject which are then lined up on one prominent feature, usually a trunk if the subject is a tree. This can be done in camera or out of camera, either in Photoshop or in Affinity quite easily. You could also use Snapseed but this would be a bit of a laborious job as you have to add one layer at a time in that app. I prefer to do this in Photoshop as I think you can more often get a better result if the subject is lined up more accurately and you have many blend modes to play with.
Multiple Exposure Photography image from RHS Wisley
How is the multiple exposure created using this technique?
It is not a hard technique to master but it is fiddly and practice is definitely the key to getting this right. It was the first technique that I used when I discovered that Multiple Exposure photography was a thing, and I found that it was a great basis for all the other techniques that I would later use.
To create the layers I just move around the subject taking a shot every couple of steps. I don’t use a tripod and, although I try to keep this approximately the same, I don’t measure the distance from the subject each time I move.
As an easy example to explain this and the one I started off with, here are the pictures taken of a vase of flowers. I could get all of the way around my subject and took an image from all angles. It is important to say here that if you can’t get all of the way around a subject this doesn’t mean that it won’t work at all - sometimes it can work even better!
Combining the images in Photoshop
Once I have all of my images I will then import them into Photoshop. If you use lightroom in your workflow then you can right click on the layers and choose edit as layers in photoshop (make sure you are using lightroom classic rather than the web version if you are importing this way).
Once in photoshop I use the ‘free transform’ tool (in the edit menu) to move the images to line up one of the constituent parts of the image that I want to stand out. In vase of flower images this would be the vase, tree images this will typically be the trunk, fountains the base and buildings could be the door or a tower. Once the detail has been aligned I will then choose a blend mode (just above where all the layers are. There are c21 of these in photoshop and this provides plenty of options for which look you wish your final image to take on. In the below picture I have combined the layers from above and used the ‘pin light’ mode which I have then edited in lightroom to darken the background, and make the subject ‘pop’ a bit more.
A Multiple Exposure Photography image of a vase with flowers
Subjects to use for this technique of Multiple Exposure Photography
My favourite subjects to use are definitely trees and almost every type of tree will work whether you can go all the way around or not - try to make up . I say this but fountains also make me immediately want to walk around them! There are many other subjects that you could try though and these all use the same technique as I have outlined above - just have a look at the variety below.
If you have enjoyed this blog and would like to see this done live then do join one of my ‘Getting started with Multiple Exposure’ online workshops - and if you practice and are not sure where to go next then maybe the ‘Exploration of Multiple Exposure’ or ‘Multiple Exposure of the Masters’ will work for you. If you are not already a subscriber to my FREE bi weekly newsletter (that’s every other week, not twice a week!) then do sign up to get more hints and tips and first notifications about my courses.
Above all keep Multiply Exposing..…
A Multiple Exposure Image created from different angles of a hellebore.
An Multiple Exposure Photography Image of a door from Chartwell
Multiple Exposure Photography Image of a fountain in central Barcelona
A Multiple Exposure Photography Image of a statue in the V&A museum in London
My first Multiple Exposure Image of a tree, Sussex
