I'm sure not everyone will agree with this, and I'm not one to dictate trends -- the right and wrong of the tremendous post-processing power at our disposal -- but I just hate sky replacement. It almost always looks fake. And (no judgment intended here) I think it's lazy photography. (Oops! I guess that is a bit of a judgment, isn't it?) No disrespect intended.
I've always believed that the most critical elements of the craft have nothing to do with gear, with the bodies and lenses and all of the other paraphernalia. Rather, paramount is the eye. Just seeing. Good photographs reflect (they don't mimic, but simply reflect) what we see. In that there is tremendous latitude and considerable power.
Post-processing tools for digital photography are so robust and powerful that we can easily do more damage than good. The apt metaphor is an image I have of a nine-year-old child at the wheel of a semi truck doing 80 mph ... downhill! I'm certain that we've all groaned more than once upon viewing a grotesquely oversaturated sunset or cloud banks the color of ... well, nothing earthly. Of course I've been guilty of these errors myself at times (it's easy to love our own photos, even when they're bad), but I strive to get better at avoiding PP overreach. Just trying to get better.
But sky replacement is my little pet peeve (that, and the word "irregardless"!). It is to me emblematic of PP overreach, sort of the proverbial red flag. Again, I'm sure not everyone agrees with this. I'm genuinely interested to hear contrary views.
To me it is fine if I took the sky picture myself and the direction of the light was similar. Assuming I'm doing it as art and not journalism. To me any and all composites are fine as well as moving, hiding, or painting on the image, as long as the context it is viewed in doesn't make people assume it is straight out of the camera.
<shrug> Like any other tool, it can be put to many uses.
I've done it on occasions where I've gone somewhere to take pictures and the sky was just one giant 18% gray card. No contrast, no shadow detail, just MEH. You can only adjust your framing just so much...or not take pictures. If it's a nearby location then, yeah, I can come back another time, but if it's not... I've also used it in shots where the sky was thin, bright ,white overcast and distracting as hell.
I put it up there with unwanted object removal: Yeah, I'd rather not do it, and I will readily admit using it, but sometimes it's a valid solution.
What the torch-and-pitchfork brigade are forgetting is that this is nothing new. Back in film days, it was common to take a shot of an interesting sky and sandwich that slide with a foreground slide and print the composite image.
plus ça change
I want to be very clear that I'm expressing views about how I view the process of processing my digital photos. I'm neither criticizing nor judging how others handle their post processing. I do, however, (as does everyone) criticize and judge the photos themselves that I view, though normally silently.
I think some of the qualities you talk about, not being lazy, having a good eye for light and color, and so on, make a quality sky replacement work. I agree with you about automatic ones where you pick a sky from a menu, but there is art in using your own sky and using the automatic methods in Photoshop as a starting point/time saver, since each part of the process comes out in an editable layer. Have you tried it in Photoshop with your own sky? Still a lot of creative vision needed.
Sky replacement is not for me either. I don't consider the end result a photograph but rather a composite, something more like graphic art.
There is some nebulous line of what is and isn't photography, and a sky replacement shot crosses that for me.
@jpolakphotography With the convergence of digital photo technology, post-processing software, AI, and lord knows what else, drawing lines, defining graphics genres, and assigning labels, is increasingly difficult. I suspect that over time the gray areas will begin to predominate. People promote composites as photos, for example, and increasingly it seems that this is becoming acceptable.
I don't see how a composite is not a photograph. A stitched panorama is a composite. A focus stack is a composite. An hdr is a composite. Surely these are all photographs, in my view.
@bleirer I do not disagree. I believe, as I said, that the boundaries are fluid and that consensus on defining photo genre is converging somewhere in the gray zone. And will continue, constantly, evolving. This is really the natural history of the arts and crafts in general. I'm not inclined to try arguing where the lines should fall. Nor am I dogmatic on the point.
Indeed, not everyone will agree. I'm not sure that I do, but I do somewhat. As far as I am concerned it's the final image that matters, not how it was created—to a point. If photography is an art then artistic techniques are expected and if those techniques produce a beautiful image then so be it. Yes, I too have been guilty of more than a few post-editing faux pas', it is after all a learning process, and as an artist, one experiments and necessarily makes mistakes. An artist uses whatever techniques and tools available to create a work of art.I'm sure not everyone will agree with this, and I'm not one to dictate trends -- the right and wrong of the tremendous post-processing power at our disposal -- but I just hate sky replacement. It almost always looks fake. And (no judgment intended here) I think it's lazy photography. (Oops! I guess that is a bit of a judgment, isn't it?) No disrespect intended.
I've always believed that the most critical elements of the craft have nothing to do with gear, with the bodies and lenses and all of the other paraphernalia. Rather, paramount is the eye. Just seeing. Good photographs reflect (they don't mimic, but simply reflect) what we see. In that there is tremendous latitude and considerable power.
Post-processing tools for digital photography are so robust and powerful that we can easily do more damage than good. The apt metaphor is an image I have of a nine-year-old child at the wheel of a semi truck doing 80 mph ... downhill! I'm certain that we've all groaned more than once upon viewing a grotesquely oversaturated sunset or cloud banks the color of ... well, nothing earthly. Of course I've been guilty of these errors myself at times (it's easy to love our own photos, even when they're bad), but I strive to get better at avoiding PP overreach. Just trying to get better.
But sky replacement is my little pet peeve (that, and the word "irregardless"!). It is to me emblematic of PP overreach, sort of the proverbial red flag. Again, I'm sure not everyone agrees with this. I'm genuinely interested to hear contrary views.
Still, as I said, "to a point." Plagiarizing is absolutely unacceptable, of course; replacing the sky, something I have done with some success, must be done with one's own sky image. Yes it's a composite. Is that wrong? It depends how far you want to take it. The only true photographic image is one that is created and not edited at all, like a contact print made from a negative piece of film. The moment you begin altering the photographic image you have crossed over to art, and anything goes.
Apparently inserting a link is not allowed here, or I would show you an example of sly replacement done properly.
Or perhaps it's documentary photography that is being talked about? News photos? One certainly wouldn't replace a sky, nor photoshop a subject out of the picture, nor do anything else that would alter the image from reality. That's not art, that's photography. Okay, yes, the camera is set to produce a certain quality JPEG that is then instantly transmitted to the newsroom, but that's only correcting exposure, and not reworking the entire photo.
So, where do we really draw the line? A true photo can only be altered just so much, just a little adjustment of exposure and contrast? A little vibrance here, and some shadow work there? Exactly where do we stop?
Ansel Adams. If you don't know his work, he is generally considered a great photographer and in some circles a great photographic artist. Take a look at "Moonrise Over Hernandez," one his most famous images and most valuable images. He had little time to set up his large format camera and make the image. The contact print from that negative would not have sold for dollar, but after many hours in the darkroom, hundreds of prints later, he had the one that would be the basis of the prints made that are now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Respectfully, Ansel got the best neg he could get given the time he had and the fact that he didn't have his light meter, and the neg he got was good enough to work in "post" as we call it. Was it wrong for him to spend hours and hours and hours altering the image to get the one he wanted? I would suggest that today Ansel would use sky replacement if he needed to. And he would certainly be an expert in Lightroom and Photoshop.
@nickg So... we're working toward asking the Photograph of Theseus question?? 😆
So what does one do when you're at a place an hour and a half away these are the conditions:?
For me, this shot was about the shoreline and the spring greens in the willows...but what to do with that sky?
@bo-gussname Whatever you want to do.
I view it as more like "whatever you have to do". I'll probably go back (and remember the damned drone this time) under better conditions.
I take pictures entirely for my own jollification, and when I look at them, I know if the sky has been replaced, so they're never my favorites...which is why I almost never do it.