Making Digital Perfection with Background Skies

By Jim Zuckerman

I have a large folder in my photo library that consists of nothing by pictures of the sky. I have rainbows, stormy clouds, puffy cumulous clouds against blue, lightning, sunrises, sunsets, hazy sunlight, etc. I find that these are a valuable resource because so many outdoor images have an uninteresting sky, or even one that is distracting to the subject. We just don’t have control over the sky, so I am constantly replacing it with cloud formations or dramatic weather to enhance the original. This ability has significantly increased my artistic control over the final photos, and it has increased my sales.

Both images that you see reproduced below were taken with a white sky. This made the pictures pretty much worthless. The addition of the gray clouds behind the flag and the hazy sun behind the tall ship made all the difference.

Comments

[Jill Hornish]

Hi Jim,

Somewhere here on betterphoto.com website I read the advice you gave another time about collecting images of different skies. I just wanted to let you know I took the advice then and have found it to come in quite handy, as you say, for replacing a dull, uninteresting sky. Thanks so much for the great tip!
Jill