multiple exposure of marathon runners

Front running marathoners

I have been reprocessing some older multiple exposure montages using new techniques.

This is one was shot in October 2019 during the Toronto Waterfront Marathon using my iPhone’s burst mode and can be found on Rarible as an NFT.

a multiple exposure of marathon runners
Front Running Marathoners – a multiple exposure montage

The technique is pretty simple:

  • Shoot trying to visualize your point of interest with enough room for cropping.
  • Load into Photoshop as layers. I use Lightroom for this;
  • To create the multiple exposure effect you have to change the opacity. Start with the base layer at 100% and ever layer after that reduced by about 50% until you get to around 5%. Once you have a sense of the resulting image play with the opacity until you are happy with the resulting impressionistic image.
  • Colour correct. I think setting your black point and white point is most important as there are colour shifts. I also use NIK’s tools.

Here is a short video to give you an idea of that I do. Feel free to reach out on instagram/sjdagostino_photoimpressionism

2 thoughts on “Front running marathoners”

  1. I don’t really understand how you calculate: if we reduce the opacity of each layer by 50% compared to the previous one, how can we arrive at 5% with so many layers? (sorry I’m not good at math). Thanks for the video, but unfortunately it is impossible to see anything. Congratulations for your nice impressionistic pictures, I love them ! I practice the “photography in the round”, but I’d like to try other impressionist techniques.

  2. Hi Monique.

    Thanks for the comment. The 50% reduction is really a guide. To get the best result you have to judge how the image looks as you adjust the opacity. If you are not doing so be sure to turn off the layers you haven’t adjusted so you can see your intermediate result. Don’t be a slave to the math. Enjoy the creativity that comes from experimenting.

    I often change the order of layers or reduce the number of layers based on what I see.

    Glad you are enjoying my work. Hope your creative journey is an adventure.

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