I was hanging out at Rich and Mary’s studio (that’s Rich above) and Kristen had an idea she wanted to try. She pulled out Joe McNally’s Hot Shoe Diaries and showed us the double exposure picture. She wanted to try to do something similar.

None of us had ever tried to do this with our cameras. With our Nikon cameras we went to the Shooting Menu and set Multiple Exposure: ON. Number of shots to 2, and left Auto gain on. Then I just pointed the camera and took a couple of shots.

Obviously that isn’t going to work. Kristen looks like a ghost, and the backgrounds from both pictures bleed together. We need a black background, and some light.

There are two strobes in light boxes set up at 45 deg to me on either side. The background works, and we learned that I am going to have to move the camera a bit to get separation of the images.

There was one more step, but I don’t have a picture of it. If you notice my ears, they look really weird. Too much light. What we decided to do, was fire only one light at a time. Only the light where the subject was looking was fired. That way the light drops off, and you don’t see the ear.

I also didn’t use the center focus point on the camera. I placed a point to the left of center on his cheek when he faced camera left, then switched it for the next shot. Remember I also only fired the strobe when it faced Rich.

It was fun, give it a try.