My friend Milt made a comment five or six years ago when I first began “messing with photograph pixels” that he’s “going to hire me to do the pictures the next time he runs for political office”. His comment makes the point that a photograph these days can be just about whatever we want it to be and not necessarily “real to life” as it used to.
For many… photography now is more a “photographic art” form and is seems only right that we keep this in mind as we view others’ work. Pixel manipulation is so much the rule today that photographers often make the notation when “the photograph is not massaged”. Here is an example of what I did to change a photo’s sky; It’s what I felt “I had to do”.
We’ve been having ongoing days of cloudy, overcast, grey skies the last couple weeks here in the Northwest and every day more of the beautiful yellow and orange tree leaves were falling to the ground leaving me with little color for future pictures. Every day my chances were getting less and less — I had to do something and so I took the picture and changed the bland grey, no-character sky….
Here’s the original and the replacement.
(click to enlarge and then you can “arrow” back and forth to compare}
I first intended to add a light blue sky with puffy clouds but when I trial-and-error-blended this stormy & angry sky it seemed more natural to the day, the shadows (lack of) and to the rest of the feeling of the barn and surrounding trees. I feel doing this made my image much more interesting. Hope you enjoy it too. Thanks