I am not a professional photographer but a hobbyist.  Still, I wish my photos look a little  professional though not totally!

I am interested in shooting  landscapes.    Shooting landscapes was not easy earlier.   It was   always a disappointment when the sky happened to be in the frame.   Yes, the skies almost all the time came dull or washed-out!   It was not purely my fault as the sky looked like this most of the time and I am sure it hasn’t changed now also.   Our eyes can distinguish highlights and shadows and present to the brain what exactly we see.   But even the most sophisticated digital camera cannot do so.  It can either focus on the land or on the sky and not on both of them at the same time.    Our creator has equipped our eyes with the best HDR capability!

When you look into such a landscape picture, your  eyes would go straight to the sky and not to the subject.   I tried to strictly follow various photography rules like ‘rule of thirds‘ and ‘guiding line’ and many other portraiture techniques  direct the eyes to the subject.  But they were of no use and  the eyes  would go straight  to the dull skies again! 

Then I decided to start my revolt against the boring sky!  So, wherever possible I to eliminate the sky itself while composing the image.  In many situations, I  cropped the  sky off while post  processing. 

I did some research and realized that I could make the sky look natural by using ‘Circular polarizer filters’.  I bought two CP filters to fit the size of my two good lenses and soon realized that once  a CP was  in front of a  lens the camera slowed down considerably and the pictures came out shaky.  So,  a good sturdy  tripod became a must.  Many reviewers on tripods on the internet were of the view that buying a light low budget tripod would just serve the purse of not using a tripod at all!  Some even threatened that a light wind would be enough to topple it down with the camera and send the camera to pieces.   They unanimously recommended the brand ‘Ma………’. The price of their cheapest model was staggering and came nearly to the actual cost of my camera!   Anyway,  consoling myself that spending money on a good tripod was as wise as spending on a good camera; I bought the expensive one.

 The tripod proved to be really sturdy and the pictures just popped out of my camera without any shake!   When I fixed my camera on a place on this magnificent tripod with a big lens, a heavy circular polarizer  filter screwed in front of it, plus some more accessories fitted on different sides of the camera made the whole set lookd like a rocket ready to be launched! 

It was true the tripod helped the  circular polarizers  copy the cool blue colour of the skies,  but they had a drawback.     Yes, the sky became presentably natural when the focusing was possible only at 90 degrees with the sun!  On all other occasions; the skies were  still ‘washed out’!   I was not ready to lay down arms and accept my defeat.   I decided to replace  the dull skies altogether from my pictures. 

There are Phtoshop techniques to replace the sky and cheat the viewers.   I  down loaded as many techniques as I could from the web and bought a Photoshop instruction books on ‘sky replacement’.  The books on photography are as expensive as books on nuclear science!

I took a lot of pictures of the sky showing its various natures.   There were  Blue skies, with clouds, without clouds, dark skies, skies with the sun setting, moon setting and so forth.   Very soon, the ‘sky for replacement’ folder on my PC  got fattened to 2 GB!

The sky replacement didn’t look unnatural if the horizon was on a straight line.   If there were trees  or buildings the replaced sky overflowed into their edges and the replaced skies looked ‘out of place’ or  ‘unnatural’.  This made me philosophical and wondered how artistically mother nature has blended the whole universe!  The moment I showed these pictures to someone  they would immediately say “There is something wrong with the skies in the pictures.    They look different”!  

I shot a beautiful picture of a landscape –unfortunately with a lot of dull washed out sky in the background.   I sat by the computer and from the Photoshop arsenal I shot one technique after the other and none of the results was satisfactory.   Anyway, before noon I replaced the sky that looked acceptable. I heaved a sigh of relief.  

I sent this picture to my daughter hoping that she would appreciate the picture.  I was careful not to mention to her that I had the boring sky replaced.  
 Soon came her comment :  “What a wonderful sky.   It looks magical and looks as if it was not a part of the  landscape.   Where is this place?”  It was a hard blow.   I felt that I could have sent her just the original picture with the dull looking sky!    

It was the end.  I decided to abandon my war against the sky and decided to surrender.   It was not my fault that the boring skies appeared  out of my camera and it was the camera’s HDR blindness.  Yes, from then onwards I decided to keep the skies as they appeared to my camera and not to me!

Days passed on and my defeat did not torment me much.   But I was wrong.   Somewhere deep in my subconscious mind a clock had been ticking.   A ticking to find a new way to modify the skies in my pictures.  Strange! 

Probably,  it was this subconscious ticking that did not  prevent  me from searching for easier sky replacing techniques.  One day I was online, and a Photoshop  tutorial by Divakar was open in front of me.  It was about ‘digital blending’ of images using luminosity masks.  Yes,  it was a tutorial on how to get the true colour of the skies by blending two or more images using luminosity masks.    I stopped all my other works, ate less, slept less and I went on tirelessly learning  about luminosity masks and how to create them.   Shortly, I made my own set of luminosity masks  in my computer and was getting ready to test  sky colour improvement. Perhaps it might have ended up as the last attempt in my life, if that also had failed.

I started my first work on a boring sky and within a couple of minutes VIOLA!  There was the natural looking sky where once  was a dull, boring sky staring at me!  My joy and exclamation over my victory was in no way lesser than that of Archimedes who once ran along the streets of Greece shouting “Eureka, Eureka!”.

                                                                             Washed out sky  

 

The real colour of the sky - I saw!