You can see this shot in 3d, although it may be hard at this size: relax your eyes and let them wander around the picture for a few seconds, in focus. Don’t try to see every little detail — there are plenty of those, but the point is that the details don’t matter. Only the overall impression of the scene counts. The 3d effect is amplified if you also move your head just slightly side to side while looking at the shot.

This is a park in Arlington, VA, not far from where I live, in late May or maybe the beginning of June of this year. Those beautiful purple-blooming trees are everywhere in spring in Virginia and every time I drive or walk by one I want to take a picture. So, one day, even though I was cameraless at the time, I borrowed a friend’s Pentax and went shooting. It was pretty late in the evening, probably even after sunset, so it was getting quite dark already. That’s why the shadows are quite pronounced and the lighter colors aren’t as defined.

How to make this

This is a shot with multiple exposures, 20 frames to be exact. They are all overlayed on top of each other with proper compensation of the exposition time for each shot. Because this was done hand-held, each subsequent exposure was done at a slightly different angle. When a sufficient number of such shots is overlaid, the resulting image is this kind of impressionistic looking photograph.

Typically, you need to have at least 15 or so shots to completely blur out all details in a shot. There certainly are applications for a smaller number of frames, too, as I will probably show with an upcoming image later, but to achieve this effect, the more frames the better.

This presents a problem because on most modern cameras that can do multiple exposure, you have to manually set it every time you want to do one going through the menu. The big drawback is that most cameras limit you to only 10 frames per shot. I don’t know who came up with this number, but if you need to do 20 frames, it’s extremely inconvenient to make 10, then have to go to the menu and set it again, then try to frame the shot almost exactly how it was before and do 10 more. You can probably use a tripod for something like this, but you’ll have to shake it intentionally, or something.

So, typically you end up with 10+10 frames, which have to be combined in post production. In Photoshop, the best blending mode that emulated multiple exposure is Screen, but you also need to make both 10-frame pictures darker first.

If your camera can do this, set the EV setting for both of the 10-frame shots to from -1EV to -1.5EV or so. Experiment and you’ll see what works.

It doesn’t really matter much how you darken the image, though: you can also do this in post. Use levels, curves or silly old brightness/contrast. Luckily, Photoshop allows you to view the resulting image on the fly, so you can get an idea what works and what doesn’t quite easily.

Another way

If you don’t have a camera that does multiple exposure and the associated exposure compensation, it’s quite easy to get the frames you need on a regular camera. Just shoot away and combine them later in Photoshop. You have to make each shot much darker for them to combine properly. I am not going to bore you with formulas, just play around with different settings and you’ll get the idea quite quickly.

In fact, when I was shooting with Nikon D70, which couldn’t do multiple exposure, this is how I had to do my shots. For example, manual combination of frames in post processing is exactly how Pine Tree Trance is made.

Enjoy! A print of this image will be available soon, too.