What’s happening with the church tower? Is this photographed through a window?
Its double exposure.
Since the sky is so bright, if you take a photo capturing the city buildings color, the sky ends up almost white due to it being so white. If you expose for the sky colors instead, you can see the full gamut of colors in this sunset, but the buildings would end up very dark (this is how we end with those iconic western film scenes or dark ground with red sky).
You can take a double exposure to combine both so you have a higher range of light. There are many techniques for it and phones do it automatically but can be done in any camera, even film cameras. However if you fuck up or theres movement (slighty different angle) between the two takes, you can end up with things ghosting out.
It can be used to create lots of tricks: https://www.ericjamesphoto.com/blog/2016/2/double-exposures-on-film
In the 19th century they used it to “photograph ghosts” (spiritualism was in vogue at the time): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_photography
Until this comment I thought the Christmas tree was the problem and now I feel like an idiot.
Makes sense, thanks!
When shooting double exposure, one isn’t supposed to move the camera. The church tower should appear darker than the other buildings and definitely not translucent. My guess would be that this picture was taken through a window with the bright sunset behind the camera and reflected on the glass. Or then it really is just two completely different pictures stitched together. Wouldn’t call that a double exposure though…
Or then it really is just two completely different pictures stitched together.
Not stitched together, it’s 2 different pictures taken on the same film slide. You can see the same church a second time from a different point of view, on the right side of the city.
Bingo. It looks like the landscape and the buildings are from completely different locations, overlayed on the same photo either by double exposure of film or digitally. Pretty cool photograph of a "ghost town"🙃
Looks like it was probably done digitally. Two photos in separate layers, set blend mode to “lighten”, and then selectively mask areas you don’t want the effect applied to.
It was done digitally, but not selectively.
I literally just added the brightness values of both pictures, which gives the same effect as a classic analog double exposure (taking 2 pictures without forwarding the film in between).Oh, nice. I didn’t see the effect at the bottom of the picture so I thought it might have been masked. Good stuff.
one isn’t supposed to move the camera
Depends on the effect you want. You can do lots of cool/cheesy tricks by moving the camera, like putting the sky from a different place into a different photo, or seeing stars inside a person silhouette. That’s all double exposure, regardless if you like or consider it “proper technique”.
I was thinking about HDR photography where you take multiple pictures of the same scene with different expoures and combine the best parts of each for a picture with a high dynamic range. This evidently wasn’t the case here.
A double exposure is literally one picture exposed on top of another, usually a completely different subject and composition. The “ghost” effect in this case is intentional.
What you and the guy above you are talking about is a high dynamic range (HDR) photo, where you take two or more exposures of the same scene with bright and dark areas that couldn’t both be properly exposed in the same exposure, and combine them to achieve the desired exposure throughout.
OP’s photo looks like a more traditional double exposure of two different cityscapes at night, but it’s also only double exposed in certain areas. Probably post-processing, rather than done in-camera.
I see. Thanks for the explanation.
Spoiler
It’s 2 pictures from different viewpoints overlaid in a double exposure.
You’ll find the same church again on the right side.
Also look at the houses on the hill on the right.
Heidelberg! …kind of…
Feel free to visit at !heidelberg@feddit.de
Still kind of dead, but I’m trying to breathe some life into it.
