Is This The Ultimate Image Composite?
Scavengers Tell The Story
When we first received this
amazing image we thought it was (merely) an interesting assemblage reminiscent
of Rousseau's Animal Kingdom. Our curiosity piqued, we contacted
the photographer, Robert Inouye, and asked him to describe how he made
it. We were in for a surprise, and thought we'd share his amazing
tale with you. |
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It was a chilly February afternoon
with only patches of snow left--a good day for riding through the
woods. Our horses startled when a bald eagle took flight from the low
branches of a ponderosa pine. We explored a bit and came across an elk
carcass. Later that evening a larger bald eagle circled high over the
same site. It took a few days to formulate a plan, but by midweek I had
a fixed camera set up to record the scene every three minutes, from dawn
to dusk, unattended. During that one day of shooting a number of visitors
stopped by to feed--and have their portraits taken. Overlaying some
of those frames yielded this composite image. |
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Capturing 180 Individual
Frames |
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Format Choice A 10-Hour Shoot |
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Assembling Selected
Frames Into One Composite Image |
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Moving And Pasting |
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After each visitor was selected,
copied, pasted in, and moved into place, the collage needed some fine-tuning
of exposure by layer. You might think that taking the original shots in
Program mode would yield a long series of identically illuminated frames,
but over the course of a day you'll see a progression of variations
in light intensity, saturation, color, and shadow. I went through the
layers one by one and clicked on Image/Adjustments /Levels and used the
sliders to get a fine-tuned match. If necessary, I did a bit of burning
or dodging on edges, and some saturation adjustment, so that no one visitor
stood out too much. If you have any questions or comments about this composite, Robert Inouye's e-mail address is robert@inouye.org. |
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