Magic of Double Exposure Photography
with Manuela Thames
May 5 – 22, 2026
Course Description
Double exposure photography allows you to combine images in unexpected ways, creating photographs that are layered, expressive, and conceptually rich. In this new online beginner-level workshop, you learn how to create compelling double exposures using both Adobe Photoshop and in-camera techniques. This course is the first in a two-part series, with a next-level workshop offered in June.
Led by fine-art photographer Manuela Thames, this six-session workshop introduces the creative and technical foundations of multiple exposure imagery and shows how these approaches can be applied across a range of genres, including abstraction, portraiture, documentary, still life, and landscape. You begin with a step-by-step introduction to essential Adobe Photoshop tools and workflows, focusing on blending modes and key adjustments that help translate creative ideas into finished images.
Through guided demonstrations, student image reviews, and hands-on assignments, you build confidence with the process while developing your own visual approach. You explore how to select effective image pairings, identify strong visual elements, pre-visualize outcomes, and make intentional choices around color and black-and-white. You also spend time looking at and discussing example works by other photographers to better understand how double exposure techniques function conceptually and aesthetically.
Once you are comfortable working digitally, Manuela introduces in-camera double exposure techniques, guiding you through the creative possibilities and limitations of this approach. By focusing exclusively on two-layer compositions, the workshop provides the time and structure needed to fully understand each step before moving on to more complex imagery. By the end of the course, you leave with a strong technical foundation, a clearer creative direction, and the confidence to continue exploring multiple exposure photography.
Additional Information
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
This workshop is ideal for photographers who are new to multiple exposure techniques.
What You Should Know:
Participants should have access to a DSLR camera with a multiple exposure setting, along with very basic Adobe Photoshop skills. This includes opening and saving files, working with Photoshop and JPEG formats, and a general understanding of layers. All additional techniques are covered in class.
Special Notes:
Class will meet 9:30 – 11:30 am (Mountain Time) on Tuesdays and Fridays starting May 5 and ending May 22 (six online group sessions). Enrollment is limited to 12 participants.
Zoom Video Conferencing software (available for no charge from Zoom.com) will be used to facilitate the class sessions. Further details will be emailed to registrants.
Santa Fe Workshops always aims to produce a high-quality experience for our online attendees. That said, variables including regional and local internet provider speeds, traffic on Zoom's servers, and your own computing hardware can contribute to a less than ideal streaming event. While we do our best to minimize the impact of these variables, they are outside the control of Santa Fe Workshops.
Policies:
View Withdrawal and Transfer Policies for online programs.
For the convenience of participants, recordings of each class session are posted privately for one month after the end of each session. Santa Fe Workshops takes the recordings down after one month to protect the intellectual property of our instructors.
about
Manuela Thames is a photographic artist based in Saint Paul, Minnesota where she lives with her husband and two children. Born and raised in Germany, she moved to the US in 2004 after marrying her American husband. Shortly thereafter she began her photography journey after two life changing events happened within one year, the birth of her first son and the death of her brother.
Largely self-taught, Manuela uses various photographic techniques to explore themes around loss and grief, her personal experience with generational trauma, as well as the notions of belonging, connection and what it means to be human. Within that she continues to explore human ways of coping, the strength that evolves out of suffering and our common desire for healing and journey towards wholeness. Much of her work consists of black and white, conceptual self-portraits.
Manuela’s photography has been described as contemplative, evocative, dark, and cinematic and has been widely exhibited nationally as well as internationally. Her “Trauma” series won 1st place conceptual series of the year in the Monovisions Award in 2019, and in the same year she won the 13th Julia Margaret Cameron Award in the Self-Portrait Category. In addition, her work has been published online and in print in such places as Black and White Magazine, Sun Magazine, Dohdo Magazine and Shots Magazine.
Website: manuelathames.com
Instagram: @manuelathames
