The Multiple Portrait – photography fun.

An interesting way to create a fun portrait is to place the subject in the same frame several times creating a “multiple portrait”. Viewers are often intrigued and amused by the resulting image.
I had the pleasure of creating a couple of multiple portraits over the weekend for some neighbours.

Pictured below – A multiple portrait of Chris, the proud owner of a new bike.

So how did I create this image I hear you ask?
The camera was mounted on a tripod to hold the camera completely still. This is important because the aim is to take several shots with no apparent movement of the background. This simplifies the editing process later.

The camera was set to manual mode and the shutter speed, aperture and ISO settings adjusted to give me a good exposure. It’s best to use manual mode because it locks in the exposure. If you use any other mode then there is a good chance that the camera will slightly adjust the exposure from one shot to the next as the subject is repositioned within the frame. This fluctuating exposure level between shots causes the apparent brightness of the background to change making the editing process more difficult later.

So in a nutshell, with all of the above considered, I took four shots with Chris relocating himself within the frame between each shot. Now for the editing ……….

Pictured below – Sarah the proud car owner.

When it comes to the editing I’m definitely no photoshop guru. There are different ways to achieve the desired result involving the use of layers and smoke ‘n mirrors, but this is what I do.
I simply open all four images in photoshop. I use the first image as the base image then simply use the lasso tool to roughly select and copy the subject from images 2,3 and 4 and paste them into the base image one at a time.
I always include some of the background within each lasso because this makes aligning the subject into the image very easy.

……and here’s a couple I prepared earlier, self portraits.