Shooting Challenge Composites Gallery

Camera: Nikon D90 with 18-200 Nikkor Lens Focal Length: 18mm F-number: f/14.0 Exposure Time: 1/800 second Exposure: -1/3 ISO Speed: 2000 (no idea why I still had it on this, oops!) White Balance: Cloudy

The actual detail for the "composite" is somewhat small compared to the scale of the photo, but I wanted to capture the entire view. I live in Toronto and headed downtown with a friend to catch an Argos vs. Winnipeg Blue Bombers CFL (Canadian Football League) game. It was in the Roger's Center (also where the Blue Jays play), and it was a gorgeous day out, so they had the roof retracted. As a result, there was a magnificent backdrop of the CN Tower while watching the game. I thought it'd be cool to track the players' progress and make a composite of it, leading to this result (from a single play). Too many men on the field? -Brendon Klassen

I shot this, at the intersection near my house. The Original Shot was of the Intersection with no Cars in it. I kept shooting the Cars as they appeared and made their turns. 30 in all. I ended up using 9. a young Lady and a Turkey.

Then in Photoshop Elements 7, I combined the 12 Images separately to get the finished shot. I Photographed the Turkey a couple of days ago, in the next town over, as it was standing in the middle of the road staring down oncoming traffic. They're stubborn, not very bright, their communication skills are very poor. and tend to pout when you honk your horn at them.

I used a Tripod mounted Canon T1i, with a Tamron 28 ~ 70mm Lens. The Tv was 200 sec. at f:5.6 and the ISO, was 100. The time of day, was around 10 in the morning. Was a fun challenge. -Charlie Carroll

Canon EOS Rebel T1i Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM Lens Wireless shutter release $30 Tripod

I set up the shot about 20 yards away from the bike path. Because of the angle, I needed a somewhat large depth of field AND a fast shutter speed to have any chance of getting the bikers in focus. I finally settled on f/6.3, with a shutter speed of 1/100", and an ISO of 400. There was still more motion blur than I would have liked for most of the subjects, but I'm still getting a feel for how fast my shutter needs to be to freeze different types of movement.

At first, I didn't really have a plan for the composition...but after a few tie-dyed shirts passed by I had the idea of creating a rainbow of colors. I took about 200 shots, and used 26 of them in the final composite. Post processing work in GIMP took about 5 hours...over 4 of which were spent creating the layer masks. -Chuck DeLuca

Shot with a Canon T2i F/6.3 ISO 200 1/100

My daughter is always wanting me to include her in my photographs. For this challenge, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to use her for my shots. I call this picture "Imaginary Friends" as this is how I am sure she sees the world in which she plays in. I had her play on the swing set as normal and I placed my camera on a tripod and photographed her at various intervals and combined them all together using Photoshop CS5. A lot of lassoing, Magic Wand and dodging and burning went into this! I hope you enjoy! She makes me a very proud father! -Corey Floyd

Canon 7D F/3.5 1/60 ISO 200

I loved Funch's concept when I saw it about a year ago. I never thought about trying it though. When I saw the contest this week I knew my options where ummm, cats. Well I had to do repeats of the same animal because I didn't see other options for my time frame. Portland is fairly close but I wasn't quite that willing to that far. It would be great to sit at Pioneer square and people watch to see what ideas you could find. If someone in Portland does this contest, my guess it will be right there. -David Lantz

I was excited and inspired by this contest, I had never seen Peter Funch's work before and thought it was really cool. I originally intended to replicate Funch's work as best possible. Although, after reading more about Funch I learned he took his photos of the course of a few weeks. I didn't want to force the effect so I decided to capture non-humans in a shorter but more controlled photo shoot. I took Stegosaurus to the pool in my apartment complex, setup my Canon 20D on my Manfrotto tripod, set the ISO to 100, f/8, 2.0s, at 21mm with my Canon 17-40 f/4L. I took about a dozen photos with Steggie in different positions. After, in Photoshop, I made circular, feathered marquee selections of each position of Stegosaurus and copy-and-pasted them to my base image. Since the photos were all taken within 10 minutes of each other only minor blending and adjustments had to be made. -David Nemerson

Pentax K-x. 18-55 mm Kit lens. Shot on AUTO -David Talley

Canon T2i Shutter speed: 1/60 Aperture: f/6.3 ISO speed: 100 Focal length: 34mm.

I was walking back from shooting at various intersections in the city when I looked up and saw the blimp. Immediately I took my tripod out in the train station and started taking pictures of the night sky every 15 seconds or so (and missed a few trains in the process).

This last minute idea ended up being more successful than the 700+ pictures I took downtown (of course). -Diego Jimenez

"Keep On The Mat"

Canon T1i kit lens iso 1600 f/4 1/60 speedlight (to get rid of some shadows)

This took about an hour of shooting. i kept throwing random toys on the rug and snapping the shutter. i removed the toy and would throw another one. Cash (my son) thought it was a great game. he didn't enjoy the flash too much though. when going through the photos, i tossed any that were of him looking at the camera. fun challenge and my first submission to any of the challenges here on gizmodo. -Duke Luaw

Shot on my 8.1 MP Sony Cybershot DSC-W90 with default settings, no tripod.

I figured it would be interesting to make a composite of the golfers that stream by the back porch of my apartment this weekend. It didn't turn out quite as I'd hoped because it seems all their shots either landed way off to the left, or way down range to the right, so I had to composite some composites from different angles. Didn't have a tripod, and just brute force melded three side by sides into one ridiculously wide image that is hard to appreciate at anything but full resolution (which turned out to be 38 megapixel or whatever). I'll probably keep this up for the next few weekends, just for fun, to see if I can fill the image in a little better. I wish I lived right next to one of the greens! -Earl Nicholson

Had a really great idea for a dog-related composite shot, but as you can tell from this pic(s), the weather sucked, and so nobody came out to the dog park :P Then thought I'd try to get something cool with sailboats on the bay, but I guess nobody sails when it's drizzly :P End up with the planes. Shot about 725 pics (every plain I shot rapid fire from entering frame to exit) as I wasn't sure if I was going to do a flight path kind of thing or what... Decided to go for a stack rather than nose to tail tho. Shot with a Rebel XS using a 28-105 lens. ISO 100, f9, 1/400 sec, and cloudy white balance setting (uh, yeah). -Eric Kornblum

Camera: Canon EOS 450D with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 lens. The picture was taken at 1/250 sec. shutter speed, f/8 aperture and ISO 400, focal length 14mm.

This series of pictures were taken at a skating park near the beach in Barcelona (41.397704ºN, 2.210632ºE if you want to see it in Google Maps). I took about 100 of them, then selected the 15 most interesting ones, which I then proceeded to import into PS for stacking and editing. This brought my computer to a crawl, since the PSD was 600 MB and the photoshop temp file was 8GB! -Ernest Figueras

Shot with a Canon T1i with a Tamron 17-50 VC in Pismo Beach CA Went to Pismo Beach with some friends from my home town, tons of fun. My hour drive home is a lot better than their 5hr one! -Joey DelReal

Nikon D60 Nikon 18-200 VR II Focal Length: 32mm Exposure: 1/80 at f/5 ISO: 400

Was wandering around downtown Manhattan and saw this interesting barrier around a construction site. Set up my tripod and took 5-10 shots every time a person walked by. In post production I dropped a number of people randomly into the shot but it was pretty mundane as, in New York, there are often a lot of people on the side walk so the shot didn't look out of the ordinary. Instead, I took a bunch of people headed in the same direction, all of whom had about the same gait to their walk, and spaced them out relatively evenly between the fake people. Then, I proceeded with a whole bunch of blending and shading using my less than stellar PS skills. -John McGrail

After reading this week's challenge, I pondered where to go to find people with a unifying theme and interesting enough to photograph. Then I got up from my desk, put on my lab coat, continued my experiment, and realized that the laboratory is exactly what I should photograph! Science is traditionally a male-dominated field, though women are starting to take their places. I wanted my composite photograph to highlight their work and contributions to science. These were taken with my Canon EOS 30D, 24-70mm lens, at ISO 400, f/7.1. -Kate Fehlhaber

Olympus E-PL1 f/10 1/320 Sec ISO-400

My idea was to go to town and find a parking lot and take pics of pickups, big time got rained out. — So today set up my tripod to try something else. I saw one of dogs way out in a field, turned the camera on him, called him and took a whole lot of shots. PS was used to cut and paste. Each one is a different pic. There was a lot more that was not used. -Kay Owens

"Black car, white car". The photo is taken on top of a tunnel, with white cars going in and black cars coming out, no pollution jokes intended. The main idea I had before I took the shot was to capture contrast and motion, which is why I picked vehicles as a subject. I took well over 100 different photographs and I probably used 25 shots to create this one. I think the hardest part was to estimate the positions of the cars and the amount of white and black vehicles. I made it even harder for myself by accidentally moving the tripod ever so slightly during the session, which was quite annoying later in the post processing. Canon G11, f/3,2, 1/400 sec, ISO 80 -Loui Nydelius

My son loves to play with his ATV powerwheel. The other day my wife and I left him ride it around our driveway. I set my camera on the trunk of the car and took a series of about 35 pictures while he ran around the drive. I used my Canon T1i with an 18-55mm zoom lens and set fstop at 3.5 and shot at 1/200 of a second. I ended up choosing nine photos to compile into a composite of his clones interacting in the driveway. -Luke Parris

Nikon D90, 18-105 lens, tripod, 1/15, wide open, ISO 3200, took this single space composite at a gallery installation "As The Camera Sees It, by Iole Alessandrini & Ed Mannery, at The Prichard Art Gallery. Opening night the Artist allowed photos. I captured some of the light rays— inspired by last weeks challenge, and combined several together. Merged them in photo shop. -Mike Beiser

Canon EOS Digital Rebel 50 mm, ISO 100 f/5.6, 1/200s In Photoshop: Exposure +1.00, Fill Light 10

Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia is an urban oasis, and is especially packed with city dwellers seeking respite on a gorgeous day. This composite of my friend Steve shows the typical ways Philadelphians relax in the Square – reading a newspaper, catching up with friends, chatting on a cellphone, or simply allowing your mind to wander.

I selected four images from the batch for this composite. I had started to create the composite with one of the foreground shots, but quickly realized it would be easier to start with the image where the subject is in the background, then layer the others based on the subject's proximity to the foreground. Special care was taken to maintain the subject's shadows cast on the bench and pavement.

The sunlight through the trees generated a lot of harsh shadows, so I also increased Luminosity and adjusted Shadows/Highlights to soften the effects. -Mike LaMonaca

One Girl Party

For a while I wanted to participate in Giz's shooting challenge, and I've been postponing it time after time. But this week's challenge was so interesting, I just had to do it. Originally I had a different idea, but due to the heavy rain decided to stay in, and me and my girlfriend came up with this one. So she dressed up and posed, I took pictures, and that's how we spent this lazy Sunday. Canon 450D with kit lens set at 18mm. All ten exposures shot with the same settings (ISO 200, F/6.3, 1/20). -Niksa Stanovic

Nikon D60 AF-S Nikkor 18-200mm Photoshop CS4

This is the auditorium in the school where I work. I did this all alone, I am the subject and the photographer in this composite It took me close to 2 hours to take the pictures, running back and force to set the timer and sit in a different place. (I lost a few pounds) It took me around 24 hours to put it together and make it look right. -Nils Bertrand

I left my camera in the car taking pics every 30 seconds while I had a few beers and ice cream around in a sunny Sunday. Couldn't find many similarities, the only thing I could think of was to group red cars that I found in the pics. As a perfect Photoshop newbie it took me almost three hours to stack 6 photos. To celebrate my first successful ´shop, I had to put my cat Volnei in it.

Shot with a Canon T2i, 50mm 1.4 Canon lens, F/8.0, 1/50´´, and remote TC-80N3. Photos stacked with Photoshop CS5 and cropped with DPP. -Rafael Lemke

I decided that, seeing as I didn't want to spend hours in Photoshop, I would make my subject something a little easier to manipulate than people. So I went for cars. I used Google Street View to help find a suitable spot, and got lucky with the weather (nicely overcast but no rain). I used a Canon EOS 550d with the kit 18-55mm lens, and a borrowed tripod. I set the camera in aperture priority mode with the aperture set to f/16, ISO 200 and used a remote to take the photos. I probably should have used a higher ISO as the motion blur was a bit of a bitch to deal with in Photoshop. The road is the M3 near junction 12, just south of Winchester in the UK. I took just over 80 shots and probably used about 20. In the end I did spend hours in Photoshop. -Richard Breen

Eos 500D with basic 18-55mm lens on tripod. Creative Auto mode.

Composition of 60 photographers in the Old town of Innsbruck / Austria.

I was on my way to Mc Donalds in Innsbrucks old town when i realized the tons of tourists, taking images of our lovely city. Thankfully i had my Eos around. I took shots for about half an hour until my 16 GB SD Card was full. Post processing took me 7 hours on this Sunday Night. -Roland Renne

Pentax K-x Ket 18-55 lens 24mm 1/500s f/5.6 iso 100

K, so first off I would like to say, I am NEVER going to do this again... I thought this would be fun....Go down to the lift bridge (duluth, mn) and take some pictures of seagulls....Pretty easy I thought. I didn't think there would be enough time to put together anything else. I definitely got some funny looks. I guess it wasn't ideal to place my tripod right next to a busy sidewalk. But I knew this was a popular area for tourists to feed the psycho seagulls. Anyway, I took a few dozen pictures and called it good. Little did I know how much work was ahead of me. I think it's important to mention that I have never used photoshop. So I know it's not even close to perfect. I probably did everything the hard way. Who knows. I was definitely worried about completing this challenge. But I did a little research and found GIMP. I already had it installed, but I never really had the ambition to learn the ins and outs. So I checked out a few youtube vids and off I went. Some 8 hours later and somewhere around 10 layers, I called it good. Honestly I was just sick of it. My head hurts. And for what!? Stupid seagulls.... -Shawn Nicholas

Nikon D60 with 18-55 lens @ 48mm Shutter speed : 1/40th Aperture : f/5.6 ISO 1600 Manfrotto tripod Nikon Remote

I wanted to capture the essence of an ice cream shop. With limited time on a Saturday I setup my tripod close to of Yogen fruz so as not to attract attention. Took multiple pictures for 15mins and compiled a composite image from the most interesting people. -Siddhaarth Rajkumar

I sat down on a bench during Harvest Jazz and Blues and snapped 46 photos. I combined them for a dark shirt composite. All the dark attire must be from the blues? Canon Rebel XSi, 18-55mm + Tripod. -Stephen Galpin

Camera: Canon EOS 40D F 2.8 Shutter Speed: 1/160sec ISO 200 Focal Length 18mm

We were playing some rock band this weekend, and when I switched from guitar to vocals to bass, someone made a joke about me being a one-man band – and inspiration struck. So, we dug in the closet for my most rocker-grrrl outfit, and made me into a real one-man band! -Steph Sikora

Title: Start 'Em Young Leica M8 35mm Summicron ASPH at f/6.7 Shutter speed 1/350 ISO 160

Taken outside the Apple store in Salt Lake City, UT. I stood out front for about 45 minutes. It was kind of awkward. Most people ignored me but I think a few thought they were going to be the next top model because my camera was pointed at them as they walked out.

I chose a good base photo which was mostly empty, and then one by one laid each picture on top in Photoshop CS5. I used Layer Mask > Hide all on each photo, which allowed me to bring each subject forward with the brush tool. Some were easy, and others required painstaking precision strokes. I finished it off with some tonal contrast to make it pop. -Tyson Call (Clancycoop)