Why you should try double exposure photography.

Double (or triple) exposures can be exciting and unexpected, but you don't see them very often. This style of photography is often forgotten by amateur photographers, and that's a shame because it's very fun to do. Especially on film.

Since I don't have a decent DSLR right now I had no choice but to do it with my toy-like Smena 8M, it's a soviet film camera, you can read my impressions of it here. One of the reasons why the Smena 8M is so liked by many, is it's ability to take double exposures. But this time I decided to do it differently. I didn't take two shots at once, instead I wanted it to be more wild and random. 

What I did was use a roll of film twice. Shot all 24 shots with it once, and then reloaded it and used it again. This gives you completely unexpected results. I went around the city of Vilnius taking pictures all day, I was walking until my legs and feet were in pain. Honestly I think I walk so much I don't even notice until I can't move anymore, photography is going to make me immobile one day.

Vilnius is such a beautiful city, my favorite. Even though I wouldn't say it's a very multicultural city, it gets a lot of tourists. So many that I heard English and other languages as much as Lithuanian on the streets yesterday. The contrast between the super modern central business district and the old town is so interesting, you could even mix them up as two different cities, that's why I love to shoot here.

So I bought the film, shot 24 different photos and then reloaded it carefully and shot another 24. The pictures obviously didn't line up properly, but I warned the shopkeeper in the photo lab when making the photos so he wouldn't have gotten confused. Next day I had the photos. Honestly they could be better but I will post them here.

You can see how my photos aligned the second time, , one photo a full one and it's double exposed by a half, and a second half of 2 photos. Some of them you can't even see because the original was either too light or too dark. It was definitely an interesting experiment and I love the photos that I got.

These three are from different shoots, double and triple exposure shots that I made by taking two pictures in a row, one on top of the other. Clouds double expose really really nicely, and they are probably my favourite thing to double expose. I did try to stay away from taking pictures of clouds when I was taking pictures yesterday though.

I do believe that double exposure photography is underrated and ignored by many so I would love to get people interested in this style, and hopefully after looking at my photos you will try it yourself!

Mobile phone trick, how to take amazing macro photos.

I'd like to show you a trick that I learned god knows where.

It still amazes me! You will be able to take awesome macro shots with your phones camera, coming up closer than any DSLR could.

This will work best if your phone has a flat camera lens, such as the one on the iPhone. All you have to do is place a drop of water on the lens, covering the entire lens. Most normal people wouldn't dare to expose their phone to water, but I like to take chances, and the results are definitely worth the risk! (If your phone does accidentally go for a swim however, remove the battery and place both the phone and the battery in a bowl of rice for a couple of hours and hope for the best. Rice will suck moisture out of the phone.) 

The bigger the drop of water, the closer you will be able to get, and the shallower the depth of field will be (what is depth of field? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field). If the drop of water is very big, it will wobble a lot and the focusing will be extremely difficult, so it will be very hard to get any sharp pictures. I found that a small drop of water, that creates a small bump about 1mm above the lens works best, but you will have to experiment to get the best results. Focus by just moving the lens closer and further away from the subject. You will have to get very close to get a focused image. I assure you that once you see what you can do, you won't want to put your phone down!

Last week I went over to my summer house where there is no internet, so I decided to take photos for this post, now I'm back in the city where I'm writing this post. My grandmother grows lots of flowers at my summer house, so I had a lot of things to shoot. Here are some examples made with an iPhone 4S.

A drop of water focusing sunlight on a clover.

Small spider web on a rose bush thorn.

A small strawberry.

The stigma of a flower surrounded by its stamen.

Yellow rose.

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Skin.

Cat hair.

Some things that you could try taking pictures of is sugar granules or other spices, tips of a pencil/pens or anything that I have take a picture of here. Hopefully you will be able to follow the method I posted above, and get some great pictures!