We had in mind obtaining a photograph of flamingos flying past the sun setting over the ocean. We wanted the sun to fill the frame and have the birds fly in low over the water. We soon realised, however, that such a picture would be next to impossible to shoot. To get a setting sun to fill the frame would take a very strong telephoto lens. We had a 600 mm lens and a 2x converter which effectively made a 1200 mm lens, but even this could not make a frame-filling sun. More importantly, the flying flamingos and the sun would not both be in focus if such magnification was used. In addition, there was the problem of waiting long enough till a flock of flamingos would oblige us with their presence at sunset.

We thought of shooting a double exposure, that is shooting the flamingos and then the setting sun without advancing the frame in the camera. We had used this technique previously to add a full moon to a photograph of a Little Owl (see Camera Talk in Arabian Wildlife, Vol. 1, No. 2, 1994, p17). This technique would not work for our flamingos in sunset photo, though. If you try to add the sun - or the moon for that matter - in the same place in the frame as another object the bright light of the former will burn out and make the additional object effectively invisible. Instead manipulation of digital images would be the answer.

We first looked through our library of flying flamingos and sunsets and found two slides that looked suitable. The fact that the two photos were taken six months and 500 km apart was no problem. Here are the two original photos:

We handed the two slides in to Kodak and had them scanned onto a Photo CD. The disk can hold 100 slides and they are stored automatically in compressed form in five different resolutions. The file sizes for slides in the five resolutions are 18mb, 4.5mb, 1.13mb, 288kb and 72 Kb, respectively. A fairly powerful computer with lots of memory (RAM) is needed to handle files of the biggest size. We have a 120 MHz Apple PowerMac 9500 with 80 Mb RAM and could easily handle the highest resolution files. Less will do, but all operations on the photos will take more time. Alternatively, one can choose to work with a lower resolution image from the CD. The minimum requirement is probably a 66 MHz computer with 8 Mb RAM and dual speed CD. It is possible to have the slides scanned in at an even higher resolution on a Pro-CD. Here the file of the highest resolution will take up 72mb per slide! This is quite expensive and not really necessary for us amateurs.

The software that everybody seems to be using is Adobe Photoshop. We have version 3.0 speeded up for the PowerMac. One can, of course, have a professional do all the operations, but that would be expensive and take away all the fun. We have never had any courses in computers or in the use of Adobe Photoshop. We were able to do the manipulations for our target picture after just two or three tutorials that were built into the software package.

We first worked on the sunset picture. To begin with the picture was straightened up by rotating it 2 degrees counterclockwise. Then is was cropped to make the sun almost fill the frame and to make it a horizontal picture. Using the 18mb file ensured that we could enlarge the cropped picture and still have a reasonably sharp photo. We didn't like the colour of the sky and the water and added a bit of blue tones. The resulting image was saved and stored in a new file on the computer. The flying flamingos picture needed quite a bit of change as well. First we removed the three birds on the left that are just entering the frame. This was done by using a paintbrush and choosing the colour by clicking the sky just next to the birds. The paintbrush is operated by the computer mouse and we simply painted the three birds away. Then we selected everything in the photo that was not blue, that is the flamingos, and painted them black as we wanted them to look like silhouettes against the sun. The sunset file was reopened so we had the two images next to each other on the screen. The black flamingos were now pasted onto the setting sun where we wanted them and the resulting image stored as our final image. We printed out lots of these images on our HP DeskJet colour printer and used them as our seasonal greetings cards for 1996. Here is the result:

This article would not be complete without a comment on the ethics of digital images and composite designs. Many photographers and wildlife photographers in particular will probably stay far away from this new technique and label it as unnatural. Others would accept certain manipulations, but the dividing line of what is acceptable and what is not, is very diffuse indeed and varies widely from person to person.

We must not forget that a photograph is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional world and thus can never be the 'real thing.' We are so used to looking at pictures, however, that we readily accept this and don't even think about it. Most people would not object to the photographer using fill-in flash or a polarising filter to enhance colour saturation and make clouds stand out. Again we have got used to these 'tricks.' But what about the use of colour filters and double exposures? Are these acceptable? As far as wildlife photographs are concerned, we think most people would accept a picture - even a digitally altered one - as long as it depicts a natural scene correctly. To use a computer to remove an annoying piece of out-of-focus grass or the ring on a bird's leg would probably not upset too many. But if an animal was digitally placed in the wrong environment we think the invisible line of what is acceptable has clearly been overstepped.

Whatever you may think of digital images, they are here to stay and we believe in a big way. We have had some scanned photos printed out on a professional printer giving results that clearly surpassed any photographic quality. In advertising it is already the norm rather that the exception to use composite designs produced on a computer. Remember that ad of a 4-WD vehicle in a most impossible terrain without a dust particle anywhere and the wheel discs reading the name of the car perfectly horizontally? Do you think for a moment that this is not a digitally produced image?

Personally, we see nothing wrong in using this new technique. However, it would be wrong to pretend that a picture such as the flamingos in the sunset was a purely natural one. In addition, we think it is highly enjoyable to play with digital photos. Some may even say that it is adding a bit of artistic flavour into the photographic world.