Creating Artistic In-Camera Multiple Exposures (VIDEO)
If you want to expand your repertoire by trying something different, in-camera multiple exposures is a great place to start, and this 10-minute tutorial from the Hamed Photography YouTube channel walks you through a step-by-step workflow that can be easily accomplished by beginners and experienced shooters alike.
This powerful and creative technique enables you to blend two or more images into a single frame and was once only possible with film cameras by exposing a single piece of film more than once. But this creative method is now fully accessible on many modern digital cameras, and it’s super easy to do.
Instructor Hamed is an accomplished photographer who puts it like this: “At its core, multiple exposure photography is about visual storytelling and a way to layer different elements—textures, subjects, movements, and environments—into one cohesive image that can be surreal, abstract, or symbolic.”
Hamed explains that cameras that support this feature let you choose different blending modes that determine how the multiple frames interact with each other. The Additive option, for example, adds brightness from each exposure together. It’s a great choice for low-key compositions but may cause overexposure in other situations.
The Average choice, on the other hand, balances brightness levels across all of your shots to avoid blown-out highlights, while the Lighten method keeps only the brightest parts of each frame and is ideal for silhouetting and highlight-based effects.
Then there’s a Darken option that does the opposite by removing bright areas while preserving the darkest tones. Many cameras also offer an overlay preview or a ghosting feature that helps you align each frame before capturing the next shot.
It’s true that similar results can be achieved during post processing, but Hamed demonstrates several advantages to making multiple exposures in the camera, while revealing the camera settings he recommends. His popular YouTube channel offers many more interesting how-to videos like this one, so be sure to pay a visit and explore.
We also suggest watching the tutorial we featured with another popular instructor who demonstrates a straightforward shooting technique for avoiding “clipped” photographs with blown-out highlights and crushed shadows that are missing important detail.
