In 1917, two young cousins shot some photographs showing little fairies frolicking around their English garden. When Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, saw the pictures, he was convinced they proved that fairies were real. Doyle even published a book called The Coming of the Fairies, and soon thousands of people believed that these supernatural beings actually existed.

Photos like this convinced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of Sherlock Holmes, that fairies were real.

Of course, the photos were fakes. The girls later admitted they had drawn the little fairies on cardboard cutouts and posed with them for fun. The Cottingley Fairies were one of the earliest examples of a composite photograph, an image that combines elements from several sources to create the illusion of a complete scene. Modern technology makes compositing images more flexible and convincing than ever, and compositing is widely used in art, movie production, and advertising. Here are some examples of photographic art created by compositing multiple assets together.

For this lesson's project, you'll follow along with some tutorials to make a composite image step-by-step, then create your own original composite using the skills from this lesson. The image you'll create along with the tutorials will look like this:

You will combine different elements to create a final image like this one.