I took these creative portraits entirely in camera, and you can do it, too

At its foundation, photography is just the craft of producing images with light on a light-sensitive surface, and there are many ways to control light. The medium is not limited to reproducing visual imitations of our surroundings, but rather, we’re limited in our photography by our skill levels in controlling or handling the light that reaches the sensor or film inside our cameras. The more control we have over our use of that light, the more options we have to create photographs that defy expectations and bring to life some of our wildest visions.

[Related Reading: These surreal photos play with your mind, and they were created entirely in-camera]

One of my favorite lighting modifiers is the optical snoot, a hard-light modifier that allows the user to shape the light using a lens and gobo. By using multiple lights equipped with optical snoots and custom gobos, I’m able to precisely choose which parts of the scene or subject I want to light, and when I want to light them. This means that during a long exposure in a very dark room, I can light portions of a model’s face for a brief moment, and then, while the shutter is still open and the sensor is still recording, I can move the model and light them again.

Take this photograph for example. Aside from resizing the image and exporting it as a JPEG, there has been no editing involved at all. No compositing, no Photoshop manipulation; this could very well have been captured on film:

This isn’t your typical double-exposure technique as it doesn’t involve lining up multiple negatives or releasing the shutter more than once. Capturing it all in a single duration of time between the moment the shutter opens and the moment it closes has its advantages, especially when you’re trying to capture the same light from multiple angles on multiple cameras. For example, this image was produced on a second camera at the same time as the first, but from a different angle:

And of course, if you happen to be capturing this experimental shot on 11 cameras at the same time, and then compiled them into an animated GIF, it could look something like this:

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I produced these images for a lenticular print project, for which I’m using nearly a dozen cheap DSLRs with kit lenses from the early 2010s, but I thought the results did a decent job of highlighting why I find the medium so fascinating. Expensive gear, exotic locations, and all else aside, photography is really just light on light-sensitive material, and by conceptualizing photography in this way – and not as a medium that’s restricted to capturing the likeness of reality as we perceive it with our two eyes – creativity can really flourish.

I’m looking forward to adding more optical snoots in the future, hopefully to slice and dice faces in evermore fascinating ways. It leads me to wonder, what would the cubists have done with a dozen cameras and some optical snoots?

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