Wildflowers, Montage [Wildflowers Photos of Natural Flowers in the Wild]
Uploaded: July 03, 2003 23:51:26
Brenda Tharp June 08, 2004
Sorry to take so long to respond, Ivor - I've been traveling in Italy for 7 weeks and email is not always available where I am! The technique for this image was to sandwich two slides together, but with a special technique for each of them. In brief, you have to overexpose each image, one by two stops, one by one stop; and you put the one that is overexposed by one stop out of focus. When you place the two transparencies together, you get a soft, impressionistic effect. #583632Cynthia Merzer January 07, 2008
I love this effect. Have you figured out how to do this digitally? If so, could you share the technique?Brenda Tharp January 07, 2008
Sure, Cynthia. There are several options from what I've been learning by talking with others, haven't tried them all, but basically here's two ways to do it:1. Make two pictures, properly exposed, but one in focus, one out of focus (how much depends upon experimentation), and add the out of focus one as a layer on top of the other sharp picture. Make sure you defocus the lens closer, so the image gets bigger, and shoot the exposure wide open on the aperture. (this doesn't work with all zoom lenses, some of them don't make the image larger, you'll have to just try your lenses out and see). Then, adjust the opacity of the out of focus layer, so you can just begin to see the sharp layer through the blur.
2. If you already have just one image that's sharp, you can duplicate the layer, click on the duplicated one, and expand the picture (Transform>scale) to about 103-105% on both horizontal and vertical axis. Then run Gaussian blur, settings roughly between 14-29%, and then adjust opacity while still active on the scaled, blurred image, until you see the sharp one coming through. The scaling gives a similar effect of having thrown the scene out of focus as in the first method, where the out of focus image grows in size.
Hope this helps - and glad you like the effect! #5305567
Cynthia Merzer January 07, 2008
Wow! Thanks for such a detailed response.Sign up for an interactive online photography course to get critiques on your photos.
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