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Composite

This photo was taken shortly after the photo of the fishing couple from two days ago, however, this is what is called a composite photograph.  It is not a “real” photograph as it is made up of multiple photographs, ten photographs to be exact. I was photographing the sunset on Howard Murph Memorial Park in Rockport during my recent visit to the area when I noticed a bird flying around. So, I took multiple images hoping that the bird would fly in the middle of the sun. It did all but that! So, I took all the images that I captured and merged them into a single image using Photoshop.

Composite images are quite popular today. I’m not a big fan of them as I tend to be somewhat of a “purist” photographer. I like to photograph real images. Yes, I make some changes to saturation levels of what the camera captured to reproduce what I thought I saw in an image, but many artists spend a significant amount of time “creating” new images from multiple images. The photographer we met in Rockport (John Martell) was one of those photographed that likes to “compose” an image and may capture multiple images to make a single, more dramatic image. There is nothing wrong with that approach as there is an artistic license to photography in the same way that painters paint what they “see”.

Howard Murph Memorial Park Sunset
Howard Murph Memorial Park Sunset

This image was taken with my Sony Alpha A7R using my Sony FE 70-200mm f/4 Lens set on 200 mm. The camera was set on Aperture priority mode with the aperture set at f/4, shutter speed at 1/800TH OF A SECOND and the ISO set at 100. This is a composite image formulated from ten separate images and brought together in Photoshop.

You can access other landscape images by clicking here. Please use the section below to post your comments, questions or suggestions.

T. Kahler Photography
© 2016 T. Kahler Photography

PS: Please don’t respond to this message as it will not reach me. Either post a comment or forward your response to my email address (terry@tkahler.com)

3 thoughts on “Composite”

  1. It is a neat effect. Did you try out any new swear words on the bird as he ignored your direction?

    The point you bring up about the artists eye is a difficult one. Is the art in the finished product? Does software turn artists into technicians? Thinking of the effort and skills involved in attempting to create a composite shot using old school tech… I am not a luddite by any means but at times the amount of tweaking and processing we are capable of in this day and age, seems to me, to make it MORE difficult to freely appreciate the result.

    1. I agree. I find myself checking to see if technology played a material role in the final result and sometimes I’m disappointed when I find out that it did.

  2. This is a nice but difficult image. Shooting into the sun without flare, and burning your retina is a challenge. I like this composite, very creative.
    I have no problem using PS to enhance an image as long as you state what was done as you have here. What is the difference between this composite and using a light box with fake backgrounds and artificial lighting and stacking the image to create an image of a flower or to eliminate with content aware a nasty pole or an unwanted person in the frame. Ansel Adams manipulated his images and he is considered one of the best. I think like anything else, too much manipulation can be egregious . On the other hand, National Geographic will have none of this.

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