Is this allowed or not? You be the judge.

This is two pictures taken moments apart merged.

Get a picture of grandpa and Fiona blowing out the birthday candles. It was an order.

In the old days, when I worked at the paper and used top of the line Canon pro digital SLRs, such a picture was a breeze. I might even bounce just a touch of flash into the scene to pump up the shadow detail.

But that was then and this is now. I am not at the paper and I no longer have that gear. In dark situations I shoot with a Canon S90. In this example today, I shot on auto at f/2.0. But, even f/2.0 wasn't a big aperture to capture a picture after the candles were blown out and I wasn't fast enough to capture the action the first three times.

That's right, I shot this action four times in order to get one picture. I liked that one picture but my wife didn't like grandpa in my fave picture. She liked him in a shot taken moments before. No problem, except for the morality of it all, simply grab the grampa's face from one image and paste it over top of top of the other photo.

At the newspaper, this was a firing offence. In this situation, it is a keep peace in the family procedure.

I actually like the unmucked-about-with picture best. I like the way grandpa's face looking down leads me to the action below. What do you think?