Before you crucify me for daring to even talk about blending images together let me just say that I do not add anything to my images that was not there when I shot it. Every element in every image was visible when shot (neither do I move elements around in a shot). Also, blending images are not acceptable when shooting photojournalism. What I am about to discuss today is not even done in my landscape images. So why blend images together, is that not cheating? Let's look at the image first:

This church was in the process of printing church bulletins and other brochures. So I decided to shoot this image for them. Shooting a shot like is very difficult. The night sky is dark. The roof is dark. The stain glass window is dark. This final image is a blend of five shots. This image is simply not possible to get in one shot (without spending a lot of money and time). When I turned the lights on inside the church the windows were just too bright (the highlights where blown). The church sign (far bottom right) also blew out, and as I mentioned before the other parts were too dark. To solve these problems I blended five images together.

          We started out by parking numerous cars in the parking lot just out of sight to the left. They had their headlights turned on to help illuminate the building. We placed spotlights out of sight to light up the front of the church. I shot a long exposure while I light painted the roof and the spire. That was exposure one. Exposure two was for the windows. It was shot right after the first shot but with a faster shutter speed so that the highlights were not blown. Shot three was the same shot again, but this time exposed for the church sign. Shot four was for the lawn as it was way dark. This was a very long exposure while I did some light painting. The fifth shot was exposed for the stain glass window. So as you can see, I did not alter the shot, I only altered the exposures for different brightness levels.

          The five shots were then blended together in Photoshop to render this final image. Was I cheating to get this shot? Well, this is what the human eye saw looking at the church that night. Because the camera is not capable to capture what the eye saw does not make it cheating if I restore what the camera lost. When shooting topics of this nature for clients, do not be afraid to be creative as long as this is what the eye saw. In other words, if after seeing this shot you went to this church at night with all the lights on and cars with lights on are parked in the parking lot will you see the same image or will you feel cheated? This is in fact what you will see.

          Get creative to create the shots that your clients want, but stay true to reality.