Photographs And Composites

Photographs And Composites

by William Lulow

A “composite” image is one that is made up of two or more separate images blended together by using special software. I have demonstrated how this can be achieved fairly simply by using layer masks and other techniques in Adobe Photoshop. Here’s the example I posted a couple of weeks ago:

It makes a whole new image from two images and the composite is something that really didn’t exist before. Ocassionally we would do this with negatives by making “negative sandwiches” in the enlarger. I have also spoken about Ansel Adams, the famous landscape photographer from California who made incredible photographs, but he didn’t have any software available to him at the time. He made his famous images by knowing how to manipulate them to bring out what was inherently there in the first place. The “manipulation” he did was literally manual. He worked on each image until it showed the detail he wanted. That is a real skill that doesn’t actually alter the image, it just enhances it by bringing to the fore what is there anyway. It also takes a fair amount of “previsualization” to know what elements of a scene can be brought out in what we have now come to call “post processing,” because it is not always readily apparent. Adams would often photograph a scene knowing what he wanted to do with it later in the darkroom.

I believe it is far too easy to combine images to get something totally new. It’s another thing entirely, to be able to see the latent elements in a scene and then to use the purely photographic techniques available to make those elements visible. Here is another example:

On the left is my original shot of a couple toasting the sunset on the beach in Florida. On the right is the image I worked on to bring out the glow in the glasses as well as to heighten that of the sunset itself. All elements were present in the image I saw with my mind’s eye. It just took a little work to bring them out. I made the image with the idea in mind to enhance it somewhat. Here is yet another example:

Here is a scene I saw. My intention was, from the moment I made the image, to heighten it with some manipulations, but I could have done the same thing without the use of computer software, using traditional darkroom methods. Here’s the image I ended up with. See if you can detect all the subtle differences:

This is not a composite image. It is simply made using selection tools in Photoshop that allow one to mask certain areas of a photo without affecting the rest of it. Then you can adjust those elements as you see fit. It could have been done in the darkroom with a fair amount of dodging and burning.

The difference here may be a philosophical one more than a technical one. Many people believe that creating a single image from two different images is altering the “landscape” in an untruthful way. It’s creating a piece of artwork that really doesn’t exist in nature. Now, you may argue that that should be okay in the world of art. Didn’t painters do that all the time? Yes, they did and there is nothing morally wrong with it, but adding a sky from a different photograph, for example, is not the same as enhancing the one that was in the image to begin with. So, the image of the beach above, has more “reality” to it than does the one of the wedding couple on the rock. That sky really didn’t exist in the original.

Now I am not really trying to be judgmental here, but the act of combining two different photographs takes a much different skill than making an original photograph at the outset. It also takes a different mindset to create it and the composite image that results is technically not an accurate recording of a specific scene. Does it have to be totally accurate to count as an image? I don’t think so. It’s just a different kind of image and especially if it isn’t done skillfully enough, it becomes way too obvious and detracts from its overall impact.

But, looking at a scene and making an interpretation as to what it contains and having the skill to bring those elements to the print is one thing. Looking at two different images and knowing how to combine them, still produces a work of art, but uses a much different skillset. Both require a vision, however.