I use “composite” to mean that not all of those elements were physically in the same place and different photos have been brought together for a fictional scene, while “stacked” means the focus and/or exposure is adjusted through multiple pictures of one scene from a fixed position.
Composite feels more like lying when it isn’t labeled as such, stacking is just a technical skill that makes a real but otherwise unphotographable scene possible.
I use “composite” to mean that not all of those elements were physically in the same place and different photos have been brought together for a fictional scene, while “stacked” means the focus and/or exposure is adjusted through multiple pictures of one scene from a fixed position.
Composite feels more like lying when it isn’t labeled as such, stacking is just a technical skill that makes a real but otherwise unphotographable scene possible.
Fast HDR (not just regular high dynamic range capture) is also technically composite but does capture things that were simultaneously in the scene