Double Exposure Digitally (in camera & photoshop)

For my final piece of work for the Unit 48 Narrative Imagery I have decided to create a series of narrative images. These images will consist of a profile silhouette portrait of several young ladies, double exposed with flowers/foliage.
The flowers will represent her personality by using the Language of Flowers, for more of an insight on how this works please see my post on The Language of Flowers.

Having researched the techniques and processes of analogue and digital double exposure I have decided to use the digital double exposure technique due to the tight schedule I am on for deadline. A few images that caught my eye whilst researching are featured below.

My favourite is the bottom image, I love the way the portrait is clean and you can clearly distinguish the background from the subject. I like the way the models features are still evident too as i have noticed in a lot of double exposed portraits that these features are lost.

There were various techniques that I tried and tested but a lot of them tended to over complicate to process. This is one of them click here

I found much simpler way, a happy accident almost. I have added an image of my first attempt at using this digital technique. I have included a step my step process to show you how simple it can be!

Step One: Open main silhouette image in photoshop. I used my own image, a beautiful silhouette of one of my beautiful maternity clients Sophie. I obviously used one without my logo on.

Step Two: I then placed the second image over the main image FILE>PLACE. In this case i used daisies, seeing as though I am using the language of flowers to describe each subject in the portrait. Daisies represent innocence. The unborn child is the purist of innocence so I thought these flowers would be perfect to represent the portrait. The other alternative was 50 red roses which represents unconditional love but I didn't think I could portray that well enough on this image.

http://www.fantom-xp.com/wp_28_~_White_daisies.html

Step Three:

Selecting the blend tool, change this to Screen and increase or reduce opacity accordingly:

Step Four: I then free transformed and moved the overlaying image (daisies) until it sat in the portrait nicely. COMMAND>FREE TRANSFORM

Step Five: Using the brush tool I selected the colour on the top layer (daisies) and with a large soft rounded brush, cleaned up any patches of flowers that were highlighted on the bottom layers white background. (Make sure that you select the bottom layer when brushing.) I then flattened the image. The final touch was to add a few adjustment layers and filters.

Step Six: Extend the canvas IMAGE > CANVAS SIZE

Change width to 16 and ensure that the colour is the foreground ( it will have been selected for the clean up brush step)

Step Six: Crop to desired size, I used 5 x 7.

Reference :

In Camera:

http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=312&topic_id=4900&mesg_id=4904

http://www.digital-photography.com/nikon-d5100-pdf-reading-sample/taking-pictures/d12-multiple-exposure/