Rob_O 
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chris78cpr wrote:
Can you go into how you blended them a little more
Awesome shot by the way. I think i am going to have to try some of this stuff.
Chris
Thanks Chris. 
There are a number of ways to blend images such as this. Assuming you have at least some experience with/exposure to Photoshop (or Elements), here's how I chose to do these specifically. If you're not familar with PS, the following might sound like a foreign language. 
First, recognize that the four shots represented here were snapped in succession from a tripod in the same location/position within seconds of each other. Therefore, other than my (ghostly) image, all of the details from each photo are the same (car, background, etc). That made it quite easy to overlay them in Photoshop (no stitching or anything, as has to be done with panos).
I'd estimate a minute and a half to two minutes elapsed between taking the first and last image. The camera was set to 8-seconds in Tv mode and pre-focussed based on test shots prior to shooting these. I used a 10-second delay, so I could manually trigger the shutter then get myself into place. One thing I would probably do differently next time, or at least try to see if it made a difference, would be Exposure Lock ... which I didn't employ for these. As a result, the Aperature value varied slightly from one exposure to the next. This introduced a slight variation in contrast between the first image taken and the last, likely a result of how fast I was losing light at the time of day these were taken (damn near dark).
With my four 8-second exposures transferred from camera to computer, I pulled them all into Photoshop. Using the first image take as a "base", I stacked the other three atop it as individual layers, then aligned their vertical and horzontal centers (so everything was all lined up). I now had a file with four layers, one for each exposure, and could proceed with blending them.
As mentioned, there are a number of ways to blend the images from here. I chose to mask (make invisible) the portions of each photo I didn't want/need -- i.e. background stuff -- and leave visible only the area where I'm in the photo. To do this, I used the Rectangular Marquee tool to select/designate the area where I appear in each of the three overlay photos (performed indidually on each image). With the selected area active, I masked the rest by clicking ctrl+al+I to inverse the selection, then clicking the Mask button at the bottom of the Layers pallete. Now only the "cropped" area was visible. From here I could see how each of the "me" images overlayed on the base photo. I then fine tuned the exposures of each to match; this was mainly a slight contrast/brightness adjustment, but I did look at Levels as well. With each now exactly the same, exposure-wise, I used the Brush tool to further refine my masks on each layer where the isolated images of me overlapped (select the mask for a given layer, set foreground to Black, select Brush tool and set brush properties accordingly).
Once all of that was done, I had essentially the image you see here. I reduced image size (dimensions) to the requisite 640 px max length, then applied a modest 100/.3/0 USM before saving.
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