Ex. 22 Addition

With this exercise, I move beyond the point at which I am comfortable making changes to photographs.  Whilst I have tried in the past to make HDR comps I have never really liked the final result, frequently such photographs look highly "manufactured".  I would prefer to get it right in the camera, using filters if need be.

After two weeks of completely Blue skies I finally saw a cloud a few days ago and rushed to fetch camera and tripod.  Unfortunately this was still far from ideal as the sun was in the direction of the clouds, however I set up on a busy city junction where I could get a good uncluttered sky line.  I took a series of 7 shots separated by 1 stop each, the two I have selected for this exercise were as suggested 2 stops apart

In lightroom I have adjusted the levels on the second image and ensured that they both are using the same white balance setting.  In Photoshop I selected and deleted the sky:

I then added the former image as a separate layer directly beneath the latter:

I have tried to work the image to create a more natural look, but this still looks wrong to me, perhaps my lack of technique or simply two images meshed together is false.  Alternatively I worked on the image in Lightroom some more and produced the following, which is better than the merge although the colour in the top left is degrading.  Overall perhaps a better photographic choice to start might have been better, however, the climate is not kind at present.

I have then used the original masked image and loaded 4 different skies as layers:

Two of these are clearly fake and a little fun for me, although the Volcanoe is quite fun, even if the sun is completely in the wrong place.  The first is a tropical sky, the 4th a Munich sky. both look added, although not completely false.

My take on all of this remains that I have now stepped across the Rubicon and am making changes that fall outside my comfort zone, into areas that I feel risk undermining the credibility of photography.