I’ve been messing around with Photoshop this afternoon…
I started out with an image I’ve used before – Hadleigh Castle, shot fairly early on a summer morning – and tried to make something a bit more dramatic out of it. I dug through my archives and found an old shot of Stonehenge that had a suitable sky and replaced the original sky with part of that one. I then did a bit of work to bring the colours a little closer and darken down the castle, before topping it off with a couple of bolts of lightning made entirely from scratch.
It’s extremely rough and ready. The lightning bolts don’t really look that good, in my opinion. The one on the right is a bit better, but the technique requires some randomness and is a bit hit and miss. They probably need a bit of fading to simulate the atmospheric perspective that would make them less sharp in reality. The colour matching is still off. The clouds should have a bit of colour in them from the same light that’s hitting the castle.
I was just playing with techniques, and I’m learning this kind of advanced photo manipulation for some projects I’ve got in mind. This was just practice.
There’s a huge amount to think about when making this kind of composite, and getting something convincing requires expert Photoshop skill and a good understand of how light works.
There’s nothing new in manipulating photos like this. I remember seeing an exhibition that featured a 19th century photo that had been made up of about half a dozen different glass plates, and you’d never guess to look at it. It’s just easier to do now.
For the most part, I won’t be using these techniques on this site – this is for straight photos, with just the basic adjustments. My rule of thumb is that if it can be done in Lightroom it’s “developing the RAW file” rather than photo manipulation.
Just remember you can never truly trust a photo!