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Multiple
exposures - art or trickery?
by
Bill Bunting
Reproduced
from in focus 38 (October
1990)
It
was interesting to read in IN FOCUS the opinions on multiple
exposures and their validity in competitions. The article
coincided with an impromptu debate we had at Torbay BS-AC,
which has a flourishing photographic section.
The
general conclusions we arrived at were that double exposures
were obviously an art form and are a means of producing very
impressive pictures. In British and other waters of low visibility,
the technique can be usefully employed to produce a picture
which exists naturally but, because of the low visibility,
cannot be captured in one shot - that is to say, the close
focus, wide-angle type of shot.
The
key to successful double or even triple exposures lies in
the term 'naturally' -unless one is aiming for the contrived,
humorous type of shot. If someone looks at your finished picture
and says `that's a double exposure' then you have probably
failed. If, on the other hand, they ask if it is a double
exposure or do not mention double exposure at all then you
have probably succeeded. The secret then is to ensure that
the resulting overall picture depicts a scene that could occur
naturally and to maintain perspective throughout - a six foot
sardine next to a three inch diver is a bit of a giveaway!
So
we were all pretty well in agreement that the multiple exposure
technique is a very useful one, primarily to enable us to
compose pictures that would otherwise be precluded by low
visibility. When we came to discuss the eligibility of such
shots in photographic competitions opinions, at first, seemed
to be varied. Further debate united us in one conclusion.
That some people had an unfair advantage because they had
more equipment than others was rapidly discarded, after all
it could be argued that a person with a flashgun has a distinct
advantage over someone who has not! The sticky area is one
of category.
A
double exposure done 'in camera' is the work of the photographer
and a successful shot shows a high degree of skill on his
or her part - it is difficult enough to get a decent single
exposure, let alone two in the same frame! But what about
the double exposure produced in the darkroom, either by the
photographer or a processing laboratory? As I said in the
beginning, it is undoubtedly an art but whose art is it? Is
it truly photography in the sense that the image was captured
on film in a camera? I would venture to suggest that most
of us have enough material to give it to a processor with
the instructions to compose an award winning picture, but
do we want our competitions to come to this?
Perhaps
the only solution is to have a separate category for pictures
that are composed in the darkroom, but how on earth would
it be policed? How could the photographer who sweated over
his picture in the darkroom be prevented from swearing that
it was done in camera?
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