Break up the day

Why settle for one moment in time? Tom Welsh shows you how to create a kaleidoscopic collage containing fragments of an entire sunrise

Shoot throughout sunrise to create a kaleidoscopic image of the whole thing

Photographers love shooting in the ‘golden hours’ of the day, when the sun is very low in the sky and lends a warm colour cast to a scene. However, it’s very difficult to capture the whole gamut of a sunrise’s colours and moods in a single, static image, so here’s a fun Photoshop technique that will enable you to do just that.

Creating a segmented landscape like this involves taking multiple photos of a scene over a period of time – in this case a sunrise view of Bamburgh Castle on the coast of Northumberland. This technique works best when something in the scene will be changing, such as the light at sunrise or sunset.

You’ll need a tripod, and you’ll need to shoot on a day without any wind, as your camera must remain perfectly still throughout; any camera shake will result in the images not fitting together correctly in post-production. A cable or remote release will be a great help, though it’s not essential, as most Nikon D-SLRs feature a handy tool called ‘Interval Shooting’. This allows you to set your camera to shoot for as long you want at set intervals of your choosing.

This technique does also involve a fair amount of post-production in Photoshop. To piece your images together you have to pile them all on top of each other in layers, then cut out sections to reveal just a little piece of each. If you’re not ‘at one’ with Photoshop, though, fear not; with our tips, you will soon be assembling this jigsaw of an image in no time at all.