Alfred Buckham, Daredevil Photographer was the name of a photographic exhibition at the Scottish Portrait gallery in Edinburgh. If you don’t recognise his name, you’ll probably recognise his most famous photograph.

Yes, that’s a biplane flying over Edinburgh castle, with Arthur’s Seat in the background. Yes, it was before Photoshop was invented. No, it isn’t real – though I agree it’s very impressive.

The exhibition was very informative about how Buckham created these collages, and it’s as straightforward as you’d expect. Take an aerial shot of a landscape and collage it with a separate photo of a big sky. Dodge and burn the join between the two images so that it looks like a single image. Cut out the silhouette of a plane from another photo and place it on top of the existing collage so that it all looks like a single, cohesive, whole.

Simple, of course, is a matter of degree. Yes, it’s easy to describe the technique, but matching the sky to the landscape, adding in the aeroplane, making it all look real is … challenging. I tried it in Affinity Studio – a powerful piece of software far in advance of anything available to Buckham in those analogue days – and my results were distinctly average. After several hours of work, nothing I tried would make the individual elements adhere together as a believable image.

Yes, it’s collaged from three photos, just like Alfred Buckham’s photo. Yes, I took all three photos. Yes, you’re right, you can clearly see the join. Oh well, I had fun, and I’ve identified a project for a future rainy day.