Exploring London with in-camera multiple exposure

London - the city of bright lights and opportunity... my first visit to the city in nearly 25 years, and I was completely overwhelmed and confused about how I might photograph it interestingly. I'm a country girl, not a city girl! I'm much happier in wellies and manoeuvring around cow-pats and mud than I am people and traffic. However, at the start of September, I had a whole week in the bustling capital city and wanted to try and create some images that were not just 'snapshots' or tourist captures.

With absolutely zero knowledge of the geography of the city, I started googling interesting places to visit. I also asked friends who were London city savvy for any tips. I came up with a list as long as my arm that I found interesting; bridges, tunnels, colour, architecture, food, and of course some iconic locations. I even found out where Paddington was filmed (I'm a massive fan)! With a bit more research, I found that some of my possible ideas were way out of easy reach and eventually a shortlist was formed. I had one full day to devote to city exploration and a couple of extra afternoons.

Exploring the in camera multiple exposure capabilities of the Nikon Z6II

I decided very early on that I was keen to experiment with the multiple exposure setting in camera, which is still a fairly new thing for me after years of using a DSLR and not being able to see what was happening as i added one image to another. My Nikon Z6II has the capability to merge up to 9 images over each other, and the 'average', 'lighten', and 'darken' blend modes, all of which I planned to have a play with. I am more used to blending images and playing lucky dip with the results in photoshop, so I knew this was going to be new and possibly challenging experience.

I decided to use a process that I learnt from a webinar by Charles Needle, where he explained how he built up almost pointillism style images with a movement across a 9 grid pattern (3 rows of 3). Now I tried this earlier in the spring with the tulips and loved the results, but whether it could possibly work for architecture and city scapes I had no idea.

If you are interested to watch and learn from Charles - he gave a webinar to Camversation that I watched and thoroughly enjoyed and is still available to purchase. https://www.camversation.co.uk/product-page/impressionistic-photography-charles-needle which I can highly recommend. I managed to meet Charles when he was over in Holland this year and he is just lovely.

One of my Charles inspired flower 9 image multiple exposures that I used as the basis technique for my London exploration.

So i'm sure you are excited to see what I created, and hear about it. So lets crack on.

Despite not necessarily wanting iconic locations to photograph, the 1st place on my list was the Millenium bridge. Believe it or not, this was my first time in London since it was built! Now it was quite hard to think creatively with the composition, given how this bridge has been photographed, I have to admit to knowing where I wanted to go and make my images! But after that I was able to put my own stamp on it.

I had about 5 attempts at this location. I did experiment with where to stand, and also how quickly I pressed the shutter in between exposures. In the end I decided to move the camera and press quickly, hence you see the same figure appearing multiple times in the image. This image I made with the 'average' blend mode and I like how delicate it is, I love that you can just see the outlines of the people as well. Given this was my 1st attempt of the day I was pretty delighted that i'd found a new creative way to explore this location.

We didn't go far for the next opportunity.

Again I chose the average blend mode for this one as I felt it held the detail and colour of the architecture. I was using very small movements, literally millimetres of movement between each shot. Just enough to displace, but not enough to loose the clarity of the location.

I'm not great with my geography, but the next bridge on the river I loved for the historical shape of the bridge and its yellow and green colour of the paintwork, which was in complete contrast to the sharp architecture behind. I've ad a real struggle to decide which of these images I like the most, as they are both so unique. However, if I look at what I just wrote about why I wanted to make an image of this location, then the left image in average mode shows this better than the right in lighten mode. What I do love about the right hand image is the moody sky and the white accents.

I have so many possible images to share with you, but I do want to show you an example where I took average, lighten and darken blend mode images all at one location, so you can compare them. I think to help your understanding of what you like, and what the camera is actually doing, its really useful to try all options and see what you like.

In this case, my ever patient husband stood there while I experimented. This is where I will split the audience, and I hope I do, on which is your favourite (not the 1st one I hope - which is just to show you what I saw). I made these on the corner of Borough Market, in case you are interested for the location.

After a bit of walking, our journey continued on the water. It turned out be an amazing way to see so much of London's amazing riverside architecture. However, it did prove quite a challenge trying to play with the 9 images while on a moving boat whizzing down the Thames.

Probably my most disappointing was Tower Bridge. At this point I had settled into using the lighten blend mode, but this really did not work for this location. I lost the bridge! I was still using my 9 grid movement, but I think the movement away from the bridge on the boat affected the result negatively. It seemed to work much better when I could shoot as we were passing the cityscapes.

However, quick thinking, desperate to create something of this iconic bridge I switched to average blend mode and this setting worked much better in this situation.

We took the boat all the way down to Greenwich then the cable car across the river. Here are a few more of the images that I made on the way - picking which ones to share in this blog was quite a challenge.

I just wanted to finish with a little set that I made near the houses of parliament. By this point I had had a couple of days exploring this technique. I knew how much detail I wanted to hold and started playing away from my standard 9 grid. In the left image below with big Ben, iI followed up the tower for 4 and back for 5 to try and hold the iconic shape of Big Ben.

I had a wonderful time exploring London with a new technique for me. I feel I definitely achieved my aim of capturing some unique images of London. Below I have tried to bullet point the most important aspects of using my camera's multiple exposure function. I hope these may help you, if you decide to try it.

• With a mirrorless camera you can see where you are overlaying each image as you build up your layers which is a brilliant step forward for in camera multiple exposure.
• This means you can make a judgement on where to place each subsequent image in the set.
• Which blend mode you use is completely personal choice.
• You will find that the blend mode that works for 2 images may not work for 9! So don't get too hung up that you 'must' always use the same one.
• You can alter shutter speed and depth of field between settings, so you can combine ICM and sharp images. In this event I concentrated on sharp images, but it is well worth knowing it is possible.
• You can also alter colour balance between exposures for unique results.
• You can zoom in or out in between exposures - really useful for capturing details or textures to overlay on a scene.
• Remember the Nikon camera will only output a Jpeg as your final multiple exposure - but you can also opt to save all the raw photos if you want to recreate it in PS.
• There is loads more to learn, but hopefully this gives you an idea to try to get started.

For another exploration into a unique situation, check out my blog all about when I photographed the renovation of a motorway bridge!