Photography Article Capture a Day in a Single Image|Photography Artist Statement

Looking for an incredible manner to capture a favorite area or view? What about placing together a college of all of the changes in mild and climate across a unmarried day? This submit will discover how great to go about growing a memorable unmarried-day image like the one under.

(An apart: in case you neglected them, you may test out my photographs from this week's eclipse on Facebook:https://www.Facebook.Com/BoostYourPhotography .)

Image to be had for buy.

Preparing for the Day

The first step is to choose an appropriate composition. Think about a location that will be impacted by both the rising and setting sun and one that will highlight the various transitions of the sun and sky throughout the day. You also want to choose a location that is easily accessible for you. The more times that you can visit and photograph the location through the day, the more options (and more potential slices) you will have to choose from.

As far as equipment, I strongly endorse the usage of a tripod for those sort of pictures. A tripod will allow you to set up in approximately the identical place and height each time, if you want to make it notably less difficult to create the final merged picture. (Read here How to Maximize Your Tripod.)

When I shot the collection of pics for the cityscape, above, I used the "high-tech" method of laying down a chain of 'x marks the spot' sticks at the precise place of every leg of my tripod. Since I turned into taking pictures in a town park, this seemed like an smooth and unobtrusive manner of understanding precisely wherein to put my tripod each time I came returned to shoot during the day.

Don't have a tripod? Just mark where you stood after which shoot from eye level. The series of 3 shots above have been accomplished free-hand using my point-and-shoot digital camera.

How to Photograph a Series of Day Shots

Once you have your location chosen, you will want to stake out a good day to take the photographs. Watch the weather, and find a day that will fit well with your schedule. Days with some cloud cover are ideal, as clouds add an extra dynamic to landscape shots. You want to arrive on location and set up before or during sunrise to get the earliest shots for your series. Consider using a program like The Photographer's Ephemeris to plot out exact sunrise and sunset times and locations.

The settings you use will in the long run rely upon your scene and scenario. I knew that with these landscape-fashion pictures I desired to maximise the intensity of subject. Because I become using a tripod for all shots, it additionally did no longer be counted how long the shutter pace had to be. So, I chose to shoot the bulk of those photographs in Aperture Priority Mode (A or Av) at f/22 and ISO a hundred. I also shot the use of Exposure Compensation and bracketing at plus-and-minus one forestall so that it will get a variety of lighter and darker variations of each composition. (Questions approximately any of those settings? Read more approximately Aperture and the F/Stop Conundrum or All about Exposure or Troubleshooting Your Exposure.) The wooded area collection was shot with my factor-and-shoot the usage of Program mode at ISO a hundred and letting the camera choose the settings.

As stated already, I used a sequence of sticks to mark out the precise area of my tripod, in order that I ought to be sure of shooting the equal composition whenever. After taking pictures the huge view of the scene (as used for the opening picture), I additionally zoomed in and shot a 9-shot landscape model of the scene, to capture greater element and record more pixels for capability large prints.

Return as often as possible for the duration of the day to picture your scene. As it gets in the direction of nighttime, plan on staying around and capturing the sunset, twilight, and night photographs all together. There is best about twenty minutes of elapsed time between the last two shots of my cityscape, for instance. (Switch to Tungsten white balance on your deep night pictures to clearly accentuate the blues.)

Post-Processing: Creating the Collage

The final step is choosing your series of favorite shots and assembling the collage. The instructions below rely on Adobe Photoshop, but other collage programs or apps could also work.

First, select the entire series of photographs that you are planning to use, and copy and paste them into the same file. Then, select all of the photographs and choose the Edit -> Auto Align Layers option. I use the Auto setting. This will align all of the photographs together, eliminating any differences from your aim, composition, etc.

Auto-Aligning the Layers will leave gaps alongside the rims in which individual pix do now not overlap.

Use the crop device to create your very last composition. (Generally, aligning the layers will suggest that there are actually a few gaps alongside the edges of certain images.) Think approximately the factor ratio of your very last shot earlier than you crop: do you want to preserve it as a 4x6 or an 8x10 or widescreen? (Read greater approximately Aspect Ratio: Know Before You Crop.) For the model proven, I cropped to a 2:3 aspect ratio (4x6) but additionally did every other version with a widescreen (1:2.35) thing ratio.

Now you need to decide which portion of which picture to use as part of the final composition. Use guides to divide your composition into equal slices (or not, if you prefer). Then, click to select the top-most layer. Go to Layer -> Layer Mask -> Reveal All. This will add an all-white layer mask next to this layer. Now, use the select tool to select the sections of this image that you do not want to show.

The selected part of the image will have a black layer masks brought to hide it from view.

Click to select the layer masks, and then use the paint bucket tool to paint the choice black. This will cover that part of the image from view. Repeat this process of including a layer mask and choosing handiest the desired phase of every of the images. Then you will have your very last photo - a university across the day inclusive of a slice for every image!

Final composition displaying Layers Palette with black and white layer mask.

There you have it!  What will you photograph and create?  Share a link in the comments below!

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