Experimenting with Double Exposure in Photoshop

In this mornings lesson we were asked to create some double exposure style images using Photoshop. I've been using Photoshop for a while now but I'd only ever really used the basics so I was nice to learn how to do new things. Although the aim of the lesson was to produce a double exposure image using the ones we had taken over the weekend, we were also shown how to use several other tools which I'm sure will come in handy in the future. 

For my image I decided to use a landscape shot I took in Brighton last year and mix it up with a photograph of Sean I took earlier in the week. These are the original photos :

To create my new image I first opened both of the images I wanted to use into photoshop. To stack the images on top of one another I went to File > Scripts > Load Files Into Stack. 

A window then appeared and I clicked 'Add Open Files'.

Both of my photographs were then stacked together in a new window but they were both opaque. To start the double exposure effect I needed to move my portrait image so it was the top layer and I selected Lighten in the Layers Palette. 

To get the image looking exactly how I wanted I added a Layer Mask to the background image and used the Brush Tool to change how much of the one image was visible on the other. By painting with black and white I could control how opaque the Portrait image was over the Landscape. 

I decided to bring out the eyes and lips and have the rest of the face just about visible so the whole thing looked like it was floating. I compleatly erased any sign of the background and Sean's shoulders from the image as I didn't like the way it looked. This is the finished image :

After compleating the double exposure style image I was asked to make the canvas bigger so another photo could be added. I decided to stick with the same theme and use another photograph I had taken in Brighton. This photo was taken from Brighton Peir looking inland :

This time we weren't asked to merge this photograph with the other, we we told to position it next to the existing photo and find away to stick the two together using the Brush Tool. I changed the brush shape into the shape of a Maple Leaf (something I didn't realize could be done until this lesson) and began working on bringing the two photos together.

I decided to spray on the leaves randonly around the two photographs until the join between them could no longer be seen. I didnt want the leaves to be all one colour as I thought it the whole thing would look better and blend nicer if they were differnt colours and shades. To keep the same colour scheme I picked up colours from the two images as I didnt want the leaves to look out of place.

So this is the finished image. I don't think it will be winning any prizes any time soon but it was good to get to use some new tools and try out some new techniques I hadn't used before. I'd really like to do something like this again in the future as I was quite happy with the results.

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My Top 3 photographers

For my first blog post I've been asked to write about 3 of my favourite photographers. Trying to choose just 3 artists to write about was a bit of a challenge but  i managed to whittle it down to 3 photographers who each work in a different way.

- Brandon Stanton -

The first photographer I want to talk about is Brandon Stanton. He works primarily as a portrait/ street photographer. He started his Humans of New York project in 2010 to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and plot their portraits on a map. The project grew and he started to document quotes and short stories from his subjects to accompany their photographs. Brandon is currently travelling the world photographing people and as of last week he is documenting the Syrian Refugee crisis at an incredibly personal level. 

- Bill Brandt - 

For my next photographer I have chosen Bill Brandt. Brandt was a German born photographer and photojournalist. Although born in Germany, he lived in Britain from the age of 5 and would later disown his heritage claiming he was from South London. He gained notoriety from his work on British life and went on to publish two books documenting all aspects of British society. Although it was his documentary style photography that made him famous I prefer his more artsy pieces, in particular his series of nudes. He died in 1983 aged 79 in London and is considered by many to be one of the most important British photographers. 

- Melvin Sokolsky -

The last artist I wanted to talk about is Melvin Sokolsky. Born in 1933, Sokolsky was an American Photographer and Film Director who primarily worked with fashion, beauty and commercial photography. Some of his most well known work was shot for Harpers Bazaar such as his famous Bubble series which features models suspended in huge bubbles around Paris. Towards the end of the 60's Sokolsky moved towards film production, working as a cameraman and a commercial director, but he never gave up print photography.

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What Will Be Here?

I'll be using this little space on the internet to document my photos, ideas, research, experiments and over all progress as I work towards my HND in photography. I'll be posting my own images as well as any inspiration or ideas I find. This blog will be my online scrapbook or diary of my photography work while I'm at Uni that I'm hoping to regularly update.

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