ORTON technique

I have finally deleted my old blogs and decided to keep only one article that I had written, having for subject the ORTON technique.  This technique gives images with a “dream-like” feel to them. They are pretty easy to realise.  I have seen that they give great results on images of houses or buildings.  The images that I used were taken at my father’s place near a river.  The subject that I used might not be ideal for the Orton technique, but it gives an idea of how it works and of the possibilities!

The principle is simple.  First you need to install your camera on a tripod. Then you take a sharp image of your subject.  This would be the first image on the left of the gallery below.

Then, without moving the camera, you take an out of focus image, like the second picture of the gallery, for instance.   (Although according to the Orton technique this one should probably be overexposed).

Once this is done, you have to do a little photoshop work and blend both images together.   In this case, I used the out of focus image as the background and put 60% of opacity for the superimposed sharp image. The result is the third image in the gallery below.

Following more “accurately” the technique and using an overexposed background (I overexposed the out of focus background in photoshop…you can see the result at the fourth picture), and still applying a 60% opacity, we get the result of the fifth image.

If you have any question, please feel free to leave a comment and I will be happy to answer!