photoshop magic

While I was on my Denver photowalk this past weekend, I was excited to shoot the Holy Ghost Church & 1999 Broadway. It's such an amazing scene, with the skyscraper rearing up right behind the little church. But when I got home and opened up those shots on the computer, I wasn't happy with any of them. The compositions were okay, but the blah, washed-out, gray sky ruined the images.

So I decided to try something I'd never attempted before: using Photoshop to replace the sky in a shot. I dug out a book I have on Photoshop Elements 6 (The Missing Manual by Barbara Brundage) and went to work. I used the sky from another one of my Denver photowalk locations (the St Cajetan Church photograph). After much trial & error, I finally had an image I was happy with.

I'm still not sure how I feel about doing something like this to a photograph, though. I can't decide if I've crossed some line and destroyed the integrity of the original image, or if I've simply creatively enhanced the scene that was before me.

Thanks for reading about stuff I've photographed. ~Rich