See It: How do you feel about compositing? What compositing? You, know, taking two photos and stitching them together in an editing tool like Adobe Photoshop. Hate it? Why? Not a problem? Why?
Why do I bring this up? Because normally at this point in the blog, I’m telling you how to see this view in real life, but because it never existed, I can’t. And that gets us to compositing. The balloon in this image was created when I was capturing some shots for an airline in-flight magazine. I didn’t submit this image to the magazine, but I really liked it, except for the boring background. You see, the photo captured by the camera was this:
Whoa, boring flat white background!
So, what to do? I could chase more balloons until a capture one with a more interesting background or I could move from a documentary perspective to an art perspective. Who cares whether the background is original or not? What matters about compositing is, is it art or is it documentary?
I think of compositing as Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3. HDR (high dynamic range) photography is a great example of Type 1. These are a combination of images that are created at the same time, place, and point of view, but with different camera settings to overcome limitations of the camera and/or more closely simulate how humans perceive a scene. (A good subject for a future blog post!) Type 1 is acceptable for documentary purposes because it depicts what actually was there, even if a camera cannot capture it in a single shot.
Type 3 is full-on artistic creation, combining multiple images from anywhere, including the real world, studios, digital ‘painting’, and potentially significant manipulation of colors and/or brightness without regard to reality. The goal is an interesting image, nothing more or less. Think the Avatar movie, or even more fantastic. Clearly, this type is art and not appropriate for documentaries.
Type 2 is the difficult one. Maybe there is a 2A and a 2B. To me, 2A is an image like that featured at the top of this blog post: not completely real, but most definitely could be, given the right place and time. Type 2B is like Type 2A but involves an image that can’t exist, but looks like it does. This is were the advertising agencies get into trouble making already beautiful models look perfectly beautiful and imply that using their client’s product or service will make YOU perfect, too! Hopefully, it’s clear that neither of these two types are appropriate for documentary purposes. They bridge the world between reality and fantasy.
BTW, I captured the balloon above the beautiful Napa, (California, USA) Riverfront, and the clouds outside of Tucson, Arizona, USA. More about compositing, HDR (high dynamic range) photography, Napa Riverfront, Tucson, AZ.
Shoot It: The balloon image was captured with a Canon 7D DSLR (crop factor 1.6), Canon EF-L 70-200mm f/2.8 lens at 200mm and f/5.6, 1/320 sec, and ISO800, handheld, on August 4, 2017 at 7:32 AM. The cloudy sky image was captured with a Canon 7D DSLR (crop factor 1.6), Canon EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 lens at 10mm and f/8, 1/200 sec, and ISO200, handheld, on August 8, 2017 at 6:35 PM. Basic adjustments in Photoshop Lightroom. Compositing in Photoshop.
Improve It: Are you disappointed that my hot air balloon image is a composite? What other ways can you think of to make the original balloon image more interesting? What problems are you having with your photographs? Let me know at Inquiries@GibsonOutdoorPhoto.com and I will share some tips to overcome these issues in a future blog post.
Go Play Outside! 😎
-Scott