Use time blending to merge the best light in your landscape photography

Canon
(Image credit: James Paterson)

How often have you shot a beautiful sunset, then, later on, had to lift the darker foreground to balance out the scene? We’ve all attempted a heavy-handed shift to the Shadows slider, but perhaps there’s a better way.

How about time blending instead? This is simply a fancy term for shooting the same scene several times over a period of time, then blending together the best bits. This way, we can choose the best frame for the sunset sky, and blend it with earlier frames when the landscape is bathed in better light.

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James Paterson

The lead technique writer on Digital Camera MagazinePhotoPlus: The Canon Magazine and N-Photo: The Nikon Magazine, James is a fantastic general practice photographer with an enviable array of skills across every genre of photography. 

Whether it's flash photography techniques like stroboscopic portraits, astrophotography projects like photographing the Northern Lights, or turning sound into art by making paint dance on a set of speakers, James' tutorials and projects are as creative as they are enjoyable. 

He's also a wizard at the dark arts of Photoshop, Lightroom and Affinity Photo, and is capable of some genuine black magic in the digital darkroom, making him one of the leading authorities on photo editing software and techniques.