From Wikipedia:
Orton imagery, also called an Orton slide sandwich, is a photography technique which blends two completely different photos of the same scene, resulting in a distinctive mix of high and low detail areas within the same photo.[1] It was originated by photographer Michael Orton.
It is time to get creative with Photoshop, or perhaps just using your cameras double exposure feature if you have it (the D300 does). Working with Photoshop or GIMP has the added benefit that you can take any photo, apply lens blurr and work on it even if you never did an out of focus exposure when you took it…
These are the steps in creating an Orton Effect:
- Select a nice scene and take a photograph that is +1 EV over-exposed.
- Defocus so that the scene is out of focus by switching to manual focus and blurring the picture slightly. This should also be +1 EV over-exposed.
- When you are home in photoshop or the photo editing software of your choice add the two images together in two different layers. Change the blending from ”Normal” to ”Multiply”.
- (Play around)
Of course you can stard with any photo you already have and make two lightened copies of it and then blurr one of them and blend them together. This is also acceptable.
Here are examples of the orton effect on Flickr.
Below are links to other sites that explains how to attain this effect both with film and digital cameras:
- Here is a howto from Creative Nature Photography
- Photoshop tutorial from Photography Corner
- One for GIMP. If you do not have GIMP you can download it for free here.
Good luck!
(Post your contributions in the comments section with links to your photographs)