New Experiments

I was recently in Washington, DC, and whenever I am there and making photographs I am always drawn to this particular statue in the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden.

A quick cell phone shot of the sculpture.

I had photographed this many times over, so what could I do that was new? Thinking about my past opportunities to photograph the sculpture, I realized that I had only ever used the brighten and darken blend modes when making in-camera multiple exposures. What would happen if I decided to try the average blend mode instead?

So I gave it a whirl with the average mode, and was very pleasantly surprised. Though the images looked flatter than with the other blend modes, this was easily corrected by adding some contrast in post-processing. The look was somehow just different than my prior multiple exposures of the sculpture. I guess there is always something new to try!

Here are a couple of the photographs I was able to get:

© Howard Grill

© Howard Grill

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