Making a Great Sandwich

Slide sandwiches, double exposures and multiple exposures have become quite popular lately. And no wonder, they are extremely easy to do and make for some gorgeous artistic images. One of my favourite methods of sandwiching is a technique that was developed by the Vancouver Island photographer, Michael Orton; the “Orton Technique”. This method consists of taking two pictures of the exact same subject, identically framed, one in focus and one out of focus. When they are sandwiched together, you get surreal artistic images that seems to have a magical glow.

• You must use a tripod for support to ensure that the images are in perfect register. Even the smallest movement will ruin the picture.
•  It’s best to use telephoto or macro lenses in order to get the image sufficiently out of focus. A wide angle lens may have too much depth of field.
•  Slide mounts are required, they are relatively cheap and can be purchased from any decent photography store, (at least until digital photography pushes them out). Sometimes you can reuse slide mounts from failed pictures or from the slides you are sandwiching.
• Anti-static gloves and clothe or airbrush may also be helpful to rid the dust and eliminate fingerprints

• If you are using an auto focus camera, set the camera to manual.
• Take one picture with the image in sharp focus and overexpose by two full stops. For example, if the correct exposure is a shutter speed of 1/60 of second at f11, you would shoot at 1/15 of a second to properly over expose. If you prefer to use auto exposure, you can use aperture priority with exposure compensation by setting the compensation dial to +2.
• With the camera on the tripod, take the exact same picture with the image out of focus and overexposed by 1 full stop.

• When you get your slides back from the processor, determine the pairs the are to be sandwiched together. This should be rather easy as one will be very overexposed and the next one noticeably  out-of-focus.
• With your anti-static gloves on, carefully remove each piece of film from the slide mounts.
• Put both pieces of film together and remount them in a single slide mount, being careful not to allow any dust to get between the slides. If dust does get in between, remove, clean and start again.
• It doesn’t matter which order the slides are in, either way works fine.

The slide sandwich becomes an image with deep rich glowing colours, much like an impressionistic painting.

The Orton Techniques works well with  a variety of subjects such as flowers and trees, fall colours, old cars and machinery.

I found that some subjects and colours work better than others. Be careful with shadows as the details vanish quickly. Bright highlights on the other hand have very little darkening effect. The reason for this can be explained in percentage terms.  Since full black is 100%, any area that is 50% black or higher becomes 100% black when doubled. 2% black becomes 4% black, 30% black becomes 60% black, 80% becomes 100%.

The above directions are merely guidelines and I do recommend experimenting. Ideas include making three slides sandwich or using 1.5 stop compensation on each slide instead of 2 on the first and one stop on the other or varying the amount of out-of -focus. Experiment and have fun.

• Richard Martin www.richardmartinphoto.com
• Andre Gallant www.andregallant.com
• Stephen Patterson  www.stephenpatterson.com