Tuesday, 14 March 2017

post processing - How do I create a "day-night" scene in a photo?


I recently came upon the image below, and more like them on Stephen Wilke's website, and was wondering how the image was made.


enter image description here


It really seems that there would be some form of post processing, but by the seemless flow of the image, it looks like the edits may have been very complex. Is there a simple way to recreate this style?



Answer




In your question I recognise two parts:


1. How to combine the day/night parts.


Take one photo of the daytime situation, take one photo of the evening situation. Use a tripod for the photos and let it stay there between the shots so the composition stays the same. Another possibility is to tether your camera to a laptop and use the daytime image as an overlay during the night-time shoot. This enables you to replicate the composition as well.


2. How to maintain the seemless flow of the image


By placing the two photos over each other and masking one part of the night photo revealing the day photo (or the other way around) will give you the basic image. From here you need to fine-tune your mask such that the night image flows over into the day image. Gradient masks might help.


Other remarks


The use of a tripod also enables you to shoot with a long shutter time. This is needed such that the cars show a blur, which implies motion. A wide angle lens is needed to capture the whole scene in one go.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Why is the front element of a telephoto lens larger than a wide angle lens?

A wide angle lens has a wide angle of view, therefore it would make sense that the front of the lens would also be wide. A telephoto lens ha...