Happy Accidents

For most people in the film community, double exposures are accidents. Happy accidents, sometimes, for sure, but accidents nonetheless. Of course, some people do film swaps, I've done a few and embraced the chaos of the results, but I never got an image out of a film swap that I truly loved. And yet there's something eminently compelling about double exposures.

Photosynthesis

Five years ago I started a project entitled Photosynthesis that used double exposures as a way to blend human figures and plant textures. I wrote an article for the ILFORD blog about it back in 2021. The project is still ongoing as I find new ways to use multiple exposures creatively.

Over the five years since I first started down this path, I have come to consider multiple exposures as a medium. And that's what I'd like to expand on in this new article. I now approach double exposure methodically to produce the creative results that I am after. A lot of times, it fails, but when it works, it produces unique images that I think are truly memorable.

The human figure

Over these last five years, I have also developed a fascination for the human figure. I stumbled into shooting nudes rather than went there by design: my early tests on Photosynthesis showed that the blend between humans and plants I was after simply didn't work on clothes, because they have their own textures and tones. So expect a lot of (hopefully) tasteful nudity.

Developing Photosynthesis

The first thing that I did over the years was to experiment with lighting and texture shots so as to produce different results. I already touched upon this in my first article so I won't rehash ground already trodden. Let's just say that I put a lot of effort into obtaining repeatable results with some of these techniques, and in particular with the inverted treetops that I had only just started working on when I wrote the previous article.

Ben Felton. Black and white double exposure of a lady naked with trees covering her

ILFORD FP4+ | Canon EOS300 camera

The Treetop

I also thought about shooting the treetop on the side so as to have the back of the model fade out from the overexposure of the sky. Models tend to really like the results of those images.

Ben Felton. Black and white double exposure of a mans body with nature on the left hand side

ILFORD FP4+ | Canon EOS300 camera

The Biggest Challenge

The biggest challenge with these images is that there is nothing I can do to make them work in the studio if the contrast between treetop and sky is insufficient. Ideally, I want to shoot those when the sun is quite low, and on overcast days. Failing that, on the recommendations of someone on the Sunny 16 Discord, I want to try using ILFORD Ortho 80 with a blue filter on a bright blue sky day to see what that looks like. I haven't had a chance to test it yet.

The results can be striking

I also had an epiphany moment about a year and a half ago. What if I flipped my approach over, and made the leaf the subject, and the model the texture (kinda). In this approach, I shoot a leaf in my home studio, on a bright white background, like I normally shoot the models, and then in the proper studio, I shoot the model on a black background. The result being that the model appears inside the leaf. It's really tricky, especially because the relative exposures of the leaf and the model must be delicately balanced so that the texture of the leaf still comes through and imprints the model. But the results can be striking (I think) and it's a really novel way of using double exposure.

Ben Felton. Black and white double exposure of a face on a leaf.

ILFORD FP4+ | Canon EOS300 camera

Mineral textures from the seaside

Finally, staying in my humans + nature philosophy, but moving away from plants, I've started using mineral textures from the seaside: jagged rock faces, polished, veined stones, large seashells, even trickles of water in the sand. It's still early days with those, but the results are a lot more promising than I dared hope. I love the fact that it's very evocative as well, but it evokes entirely different things in the viewer's mind. There again, the balance of exposures is tricky, the mineral textures tend to overpower the model's features, but when it works, boy does it work...

Ben Felton. Black and white double exposure of a naked lady's back with her hands up in the air.

ILFORD FP4+ | Canon EOS300 camera

Why stop at nature?

There are reasons I went with plant textures with the initial Photosynthesis project, but inevitably, at some point, I wondered why I shouldn't use other types of textures. Of course, that would evoke entirely different things, but that's OK too. I first experimented with industrial textures, engine parts, derelict metallic refuse, etc. I also tried computer motherboards, for a decidedly more cybernetic feel. Both of those I find super interesting, if less immediately pretty than the natural textures.

Ben Felton. Black and white double exposure of a man crossing his hands exposed with newspaper.

ILFORD FP4+ | Canon EOS300 camera

Ben Felton. Black and white double exposure of a man's portrait with an inside of a computer in his face and body.

ILFORD FP4+ | Canon EOS300 camera

Printed materials

More recently, I also did some trials with printed materials. Fabrics, pieces of text, newspapers. I think there's definitely something there, and it gives me the opportunity to have the models choose what printed text they want on their bodies, but I still need to work on this a fair bit to get to a point where it's repeatable. My favourite image so far uses old newspapers I found in a flea market, an old French daily called Liberté. Since the model wanted the word "freedom" written on her, that seemed fitting.

Ben Felton. Black and white double exposure of a woman's body exposed with newspaper

ILFORD FP4+ | Canon EOS300 camera

Why stop at two exposures?

Sometime into this project, I had the idea of trying to superimpose the model on itself, no texture involved. The initial inspiration for this was a 1933 photo entitled Danse by German photographer Yva. On this photo you see a naked dancer in four different poses with her arms spread around her. It's beautiful, and it's got a mythical quality to it, as if through the process of multiple exposure, the dancer became a goddess.

So I gave that a try, with a lot of misses, but enough hits that I didn't discourage myself. There's a conceptual exercice of thinking up poses as well as figuring out how to light them. The biggest challenge of course is that parts of the body are going to be exposed multiple times (up to 9 in my case, which is the maximum my Canon EOS 300 will let me shoot as multiple exposures) but others only once. So I have to position my lights so that they barely light the parts that don't move, and directly light the parts that do. Quite tricky. But again, when it works, it's quite spectacular (I think).

I've called this project "one and more", and I'm still building the corpus of images on this one. I haven't yet thought too hard about printing and all, but that's the next step.

Ben Felton. Black and white double exposure of a woman sat down with 6 arms.

ILFORD FP4+ | Canon EOS300 camera

One and more

One thing I'm curious about but haven't really progressed on with the exception of one image is the idea that an area of the body that's exposed multiple times will be lighter than the rest. Could that be made to form a shape ? I experimented with a simple pose to produce a diamond shape, and I quite like the results, but I need to put some more brainpower into thinking up super positions that will generate interesting shapes.

Ben Felton.

ILFORD FP4+ | Canon EOS300 camera

Where now?

The interesting thing for me throughout this process of exploration is that I have come to realise that the possibilities with double exposures are endless. I can vary the textures, the poses, the shapes and super positions... It's hard work conceptually, but so rewarding all the same...

I have come to a point where I truly view double exposure as a creative medium.

 

Images ©Benoît Felten