Visual Interest: Impossible Exposure and Light Spectrum

This study will go over how to add visual interest going beyond what a camera could actually capture.

Let’s start by looking at a surrealist composite photograph by Stephen Wilkes. It combines two images - a day photo exposed for day and a night photo exposed for night, adding a color range not possible at one time of day.

A similar surrealist/romantic example from Thomas Kinkade merging night and day:

Let’s look at another way day and night can be merged

EXPOSURE

Thomas Kinkade shows this by keeping the sky fully daytime and having a nighttime exposure in windows make for more fantastical visual interest.

The photographic extreme version of this concept from Stephen Wilkes:

Same concept is used in the Thomas Kinkade painting below - where the foreground and mid ground subjects are lit and exposed for night/dusk while the background and sky are still daytime:

A more subtle use of cheating exposure for a visually interesting look is in the Star Wars movies. Notice the stars:

When exposing for planets in space with a camera, you will actually not see stars. NASA example:

LIGHT SPECTRUM

Cheating exposure is one way of combining looks in space for a unique look, and another is combining different parts of the light spectrum. The NASA image below shows the aurora borealis on Jupiter. The aura is photographed in ultra-violet and Jupiter is in the visible spectrum. The combination adds fresh visual interest than what could be captured in just one part of the spectrum.