Mother Nature works in mysterious ways....
We all know that, don’t we? When I’m out photographing a landscape, I often start to build a picture in my mind as to what I want to achieve, and also how I would like my scene to be ideally lit. In other words, where there should be light, and where there should be shadow. How many times have you thought, “ooh just a little patch of light on that hilltop, or the church needs to be in the spotlight” Well, the answer to that is to use a technique called time blending. This is a method of blending two or more photos of the same scene but taken at different times to essentially blend two moments of light.
Often a little bit of patience, determination and studious observation will bring those results.. Sometimes though, the moments happen, but at separate times, like in the following photos:
Here I wanted light to fall on both the castle on the hill and the tall building on the left, simultaneously. It was critical that it also happened while that beautiful cloud was drifting perfectly overhead!
First, light fell on the castle only and the tall building was in shade.
Then light fell on the tall building, but the castle fell into shade.
But not on both like this:
The cloud then moved away.
By the time the light did fall on both, that great cloud had moved away, so my visualised image was lost.
Or was it? Well, as you can see above, I managed to get it, by time blending.
Another scene where the same thing happened.
Here I wanted the church to be lit, and the tip of the mountain also lit because there is a church sitting on the top left hill.
In the first photo the church was beautifully lit.
Then the church was thrown into the shade but the hilltop lit.
But like before, by merging the two I got what I wanted:
How was it done?
Firstly, you need to be setup on a tripod and the two photos must be identically composed, so there is no mismatch when time blending. For the rest, watch the video below:
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