Paul M. Smith is a photographer who’s photography mostly consists of an unconventional interpretation of tableaux vivants as his images depict modern scenes with Paul Playing the part of every subject in the photo. A lot of his photography explores the idea of ‘lad culture’. His images feature several frames merged together carefully so it appears that Paul is in several places in the image at once, This is likely done using a tripod and remote in order to avoid any movement to camera, this creates a seamless transition between the images which in some cases, one of his photos will contain as many as 8 frames in a single image. He often pushes the boundaries of what is possible with this type of photography, often featuring interaction between the subjects in the photos, which will often look awkward and it is difficult to be spacially aware of subjects that of course, aren’t actually there however if done correctly can make the images much more convincing. The image below is an example of this, you can see 6 subjects very close together overlapping in different areas, with some of the subjects even touching in areas.

There isn’t much technically special with these images as they are made to look like a typical photo to document a memory etc. This helps to make the image look even more convincing. It is taken using very flat lighting (likely using a flash) to help hide any seems between the images and there are visible drop shadows interacting with the various subjects in the photo likely added in post processing in a program such as photo-shop.