I’ve always loved multiple exposure silhouettes, but haven’t yet found a time when friends are available and it’s sunny to take any silhouette photos. This got me wondering - is it possible to make these photos at home?

I trawled through Flickr and Google image search for some silhouettes and background images. I turned off all the lights in the room, put the background image on my screen in full screen mode, then took a photo. After that I swapped to the silhouette image and took a photo of that without winding on the film. As it turns out, the experiment was successful. It’s really easy to take multiple exposure photos using your screen - even if it’s not the purest way of doing it!

All shots were on a Nikon FM2N Series E 50mm for 1/15th of a second at f/2. I used black and white film (Kodak Plus-X) simply because I could develop it quickly at home to reduce the cycle time. It was developed in Rodinal R09 for about 8 minutes. Levels adjustment in Lightroom.

For the image below I used the silhouette here:

New York Smoker

Beach Smoker

Forest Smoker

New York Photographer